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KEY BOOK V. 



ENGLISH LITERATURE. 



" 3n tl|? trup IClt^rarg Han tlj^rt xh ttfUH fu^r, arkttowl- 
sh^sh or «nt bg tijjp UJ0rlb, a aarr^lnnf aa : Ijt ta tljie Itgljt 
of tiff mnrlli ; tlj? mnrlb'a ^mat : — guiMrtg it, Itkr a aarrrb 
pillar nf 3ftrf, in ita hnvk :pilgrimagt tiyrnnglj tljie maat^ of 
Sfittw." 

— QIarlcU : " ®Ijt ?|wn aa Man of Slfttfra." 



ENGLISH MASTERPIECES OF 
THE NINETEENTH CENTURY 



By MARTHA HALE SHACKFORD, Ph D. 

Associate Professor of English Literature, Wellesley College. 



L. J. FREEMAN. PUBLISHER, 
CENTRAL FALLS, R. I. 



\ 



9^ 






LIBRARY of CONGRESS j 
Two Copies Received 

APR 24 1907 

f. iopynght Entry 
Class /\ XX<5„ No= 



L^ 



C©PY 



Copyright 1906, 
BY L. J. FREKMAN. 



PRESS OF 

E. L. Freeman Company, 

CENTRAL FALLS, R. I. 



Dedicated to 
ENGLISH LITERATURE VI, WELLESLEY COLLEGE. 

1895-6. 



®abk at (dottttttta. 



I. General Survey of the Century in England, 

II. The Romantic Movement: Byron, Shelley, Keats. 

III. William Wordsworth : The Excursion. 

IV. Charles Lamb : The Essays of Elia: 
V. Thomas Carlyle : Sartor Resartus. 

VI. The Tractarian Movement: Newman. 

VII. The Novel. 

VIII. Robert Browning : The Ring and the Book. 

IX. Rossetti and the Pre-Raphaelite Movement. 

X. Walter Pater: Marius the Epicurean. 

XL Historical Outline. 

XII. The Study of Literature. 

XIII. Bibliography. 

XIV. Suggestions for Clubs. 
XV. Pronouncing List. 






The nineteenth century in England was a period of Hterary 
activity closely paralleling that of the Elizabethan Age. 
Queen Elizabeth and Queen Victoria both lent encouragement 
to writers, contributing to the great advancement of their nation 
along the highways of finer intellectual life. The severance 
between literature and contemporary existence, so frequently 
noticeable, is replaced in this era by close union between the 
actual and the ideal. The French Revolution and the Ameri- 
can Revolution had overthrown certain forms of political tyr- 
anny, and the ideas which had animated the two rebellious 
nations were communicated to the English people by books, 
newspapers, the tales of travellers, and the poetical work of 
such men as Wordsworth, Coleridge, Shelley, and Byron. Sci- 
ence stirred to intense activity, bringing before the world the- 
ories of the descent of man which made necessary a thorough 
reconstruction of men's opinions. Darwin, Huxley, and Her- 
bert Spencer established with incontrovertible firmness the doc- 
trines of Evolution. Political Economy began its career of 
benefit to the state in urging the consideration of practical 
questions in regard to labor. Out of the rigidity and unfair- 



8 GENERAL SURVEY OP THE CENTURY IN ENGLAND. 

ness of the past arose new laws, new adjustments in consider- 
ation of the poorer classes, which eventually worked into more 
extended social freedom. This regeneration of English thought, 
and consequently of conditions, was brought about by the work 
of special men who in turn were themselves subject to outside 
influences from other men or other nations. The insularity 
which had kept England from attaining her true greatness 
was exchanged for a thoroughly broad acquaintance with the 
rest of the world. Coleridge, fascinated by German philos- 
ophy, brought back from Germany new thought which he 
introduced to his fellow countrymen. Carlyle, undergoing 
the same delight, discussed German literature in various es- 
says, pointing out significant beauties in the work of Goethe, 
Schiller, and others. Shelley and Landor acquainted Eng- 
lishmen with the beauty of Italy, Byron pictured the Greek 
world of the day, and the later poets continued to feed 
English ideals with knowledge of other lands. 

Few epochs have such variety of production in literature as 
this century in England. Almost every side of life found able 
champions who combined clear exposition with style of 
distinction. Never were so many readers taking active and 
intelligent interest in affairs, helping the causes of the day 
by illuminating question or acute criticism. The critical 
spirit was completely astir, and no side of life or letters was 
exempt from candid examination. Books were reviewed with 
a rigor that has made the early nineteenth century unique in the 
history of letters, for the establishment of quarterly and monthly 



GENERAL SURVEY OF THE CENTURY IN ENGLAND. 9 

journals meant the foundation of a methodical and conscien- 
tious survey of the phenomena of the day. The Edinburgh 
Review in 1802, The London Quarterly in 1809, Blackwood's 
Magazine in 181 7, and the weekly journals, The Athenceum 
and The Spectator, in 1828, created a new era for the reading 
public. Principles of criticism were formulated by various 
schools, from the severe, somewhat frigid, standards of Francis 
Jeffrey of The Edinburgh Review to the tolerant but wisely 
penetrating criticism of Charles Lamb. Macaulay, Hazlitt, 
De Quincey, "Christopher North," Coleridge, Leigh Hunt, and 
others were engaged in bringing the appreciation of great litera- 
ture to its fullest development and in their progress they drew 
upon the great critical theories of other ages and other lands. 
Out of the endless agitations about taste and about principles 
of intellectual life there grew a literature of deep beauty. Of 
this periodical literature two widely diverse kinds served 
to give Englishmen abundant pleasure and a definite piquant 
stimulus. These two works are Lamb's Essays of Elia, which 
appeared from time to time as the author's leisure permitted, 
and Carlyle's Sartor Resartus. 



®1|? Eomattttr Maxttmmt 



The Romantic School in English poetry was a natural 
product of influences extending from Germany and from 
France. Unrestrained worship of the ego, a fine sense of su- 
priority to any conventional laws that interfere with the buoyant 
expression of a man's perception of truth and beauty, and a 
longing for subtle splendor of line and phrase were transmitted 
to the young English writers. Rousseau's inspiration had 
roused in France and in Germany a host of romanticists 
who had flung themselves with zeal into the production of 
a new literature embodying all these varied ideals. Eng- 
land followed speedily the lead of the other nations-: in 
Chatterton's imitations of mediaeval tale, Macpherson's fraud- 
ulent publication of the remains of Ossian, in the minor 
poems imitative of Spenser, of Milton, and of the older English 
authors, may be seen the activity of the writers. The novel 
received an impetus from Walpole's The Castle of Otranto, in 
the Gothic style, and from the Tales oj Terror and Wonder of 
Lewis. On all sides there was revolt against the empty formal- 
ism of the classic school which had insisted upon the ideal of 
Pope, to call true art 

"What oft was thought, but ne'er so well expressed." 



THE ROMANTIC MOVEMENT. II 

The most easily defined characteristic of the school was their 
liking for the mediaeval, where they found ingenuous emotional 
vigor united with rare beauty of concrete form. In the great 
cathedrals of the middle ages was untold glory of spiritual 
yearning worked out in massive stone, ornamented with rich 
tracery and with glowing reds and blues of stained glass win- 
dows. Going back to the pageantry of knightly tournaments 
or of religious ceremonial, writers found abundant inspiration 
for such works as Scott's chivalric romance, Ivanhoe, or his 
Marmion, Coleridge's Ancient AI ariner, Sind Christabel, where 
the forces of the supernatural world were solicited to play their 
parts in human life as they had in frankly superstitious periods 
of old. The White Doe of Rylstone, The Eve of St. Agnes, 
La Belle Dame Sans Merci, the most exquisite of these 
echoes of mediaevalism, and The Idylls of the King all owe their 
origin to this movement. 

The older literature was read eagerly for the sake of its 
somewhat lawless spirit and imitative ballads were pro- 
duced. The use of the Spenserian stanza by Byron, Shelley, 
and Keats arose from the same cause. The autobiographical 
tendencies noted in Wordsworth and other writers was another 
issue. Doubtless the new interest in cultivating the ode, 
as a lyric form, shown by Gray, Collins, Wordsworth, Keats, 
and Tennyson was nothing more than an experiment in 
metrical freedom from obvious laws. The consummation of 
the movement came in the work of Wordsworth, Coleridge, 
Byron, Shelley, and Keats, who were all animated by roman- 



12 THE ROMANTIC MOVEMENT. 

tic principles but were guided to achievement by the experience 
of their predecessors. 

In Byron and Shelley are exampled the tendencies to un- 
daunted avowal of personal opinion. Byron rehearsed, in 
Childe HaroWs Pilgrimage and in Don Juan, bits from his own 
history, and added a sufficient amount of fanciful material 
to express his views of society and the world in general. His 
dramas, especially Cain, know no moderation in their vehement 
attack of accepted religious beliefs. A rebellious, vain, but 
ardent young man, Byron attracted world-wide attention be- 
cause of his daring words and his utter defiance of conven- 
tions. Gifted with a somewhat obvious power of satiric ex- 
pression, he succeeded in phrasing his views with considerable 
piquancy and with occasional real beauty. His bold freedom, 
tinged with disregard for the accepted laws of society, won 
him many followers who fancied that his personal pique and 
his melodramatic declamation were great poetic passion. 
More sober reflection has awarded to Byron sincere admi- 
ration for his quick susceptibilities and for his undoubted gift 
of expression, but few critics accept his flamboyant pessimism 
as inspired truth. Genius Byron undoubtedly had, though it 
failed to find adequate expression. All his work betokens 
immoderate haste and a disregard for fine gradations. Witty, 
brilliantly satiric sometimes, the young author trusted too 
much to his cleverness at burlesque, and often deceived him- 
self into thinking that his nobler ideals were signs of imma- 
turity. Byron is read widely still; men find entertainment in 



THE ROMANTIC MOVEMENT. I3 

his racy language, and any one can land stray passages in 
Childe Harold which will never lose their descriptive vivid- 
ness, so genuinely responsive are they to the real beauty that 
their writer saw in his finest moments of exalted feeling. 

Shelley, a representative of the same school, manifested a 
disregard for law, following his own impulses to the full 
and maintaining that impulse is a sufficient guide. The 
history of his rupture with his university, with his father, 
with his friends, with his first wife, shows his stubborn ad- 
herence to ideals, however mistaken. Shelley's nature was 
one quite different from that of Byron, being much more finely 
touched. Youth and the illusive dreams of youth led him on 
to contest with the old established ways of life, and he looked 
upon himself as one destined to bring salvation to those who 
were otherwise to know nothing of the sweet and piercing joys 
of life. A romanticist in mood and in manner, Shelley was 
likewise a devout student of Greek literature, nourishing him- 
self upon the severe beauty of the classics as well as upon the 
tempestuous wildness of romantic literature. All his work 
shows immaturity, yet all shows, Hkewise, a genius verging 
upon sublime performance. He never succeeded in forming 
himself, in restraining his wandering fancies with genuine 
artistic precision, and consequently we have continually a 
sense of unnecessary waste, of extravagant expenditure of power 
that might have been a perpetual revelation to men. Pro- 
metheus Unbound is the most significant of Shelley's creations, 
combining, as it does, the classic myth, discussed ages before 



14 THE ROMANTIC MOVEMENT. 

by ^schylus, with the thoroughly modern attitude of an icono- 
clast. The story, adapted by Shelley to suit his purposes, 
shows Prometheus, after centuries of torment, at last freed from 
the domination of Jupiter and reunited with Asia ; or, in other 
words, the spirit of humanity is at last restored to its com- 
munion with the spirit of nature and eternal blessing is bestowed 
upon the world. Shelley introduced with romantic freedom 
various supernatural beings, — echoes, phantasms, furies, 
nymphs, fitting his action into a background of Indian loveli- 
ness. The lyric beauty of the drama is evident in the number- 
less songs and choruses, where a kind of unearthly spell is cast 
by the vague symbolism of the words. Uneven the music is, 
but at its best it touches a high, clear melody, exquisite, fragile, 
vanishing, created out of ethereal forms and colors. The im- 
pression made upon the reader is one of wonder and exaltation, 
combined with a sense of the exceeding visionariness of it all. 
Shelley deals always with very general terms, voicing his ideas 
in a magnificent but usually unintelligible sublimity. The 
more exact and detailed explanation of his views must come 
from expounders. He speaks of brotherly love, of vast gener- 
osity, of sacrifice and surrender, of universal love, and he em- 
braced all the words of vast meaning in the language, thrilling 
the reader with a wild sense of great spiritual uplift. A little 
danger exists in Shelley's work, for he incites his reader to a 
vagueness of ideals rather than to clearly defined notions of 
duty. His encouragement of primitive impulse does not re- 
gard the nice adjustment of men's relations to each other which 



THE ROMANTIC MOVEMENT. 1 5 

necessitates continual self-surrender. The law upon which 
society is founded can not permit the few favored spirits to 
indulge their fancies regardless of others. Shelley, all on fire 
for liberty, never quite learned the commonplace heroism of 
renunciation. Undoubtedly his championship of the op- 
pressed has led many to a noble grasp of the office of tenderness; 
his adoration of truth, of beauty, of spiritual rather than ma- 
terial happiness has exerted an ever-widening influence, rous- 
ing men to note the insufficiency of their own dreams. 

Keats, the most promising of the poets of his generation, 
died, at the age of twenty-six, without meeting his share of 
appreciation. Called, curiously enough, to be a surgeon, the 
young man, already devoted to beauty, performed his tasks, 
learning from his experiences something of the practical facts 
of human suffering which Shelley knew only in general fashion. 
At all events Keats possessed a profoundly intense sense of the 
sadness of human hfe in comparison with the limitless joy which 
it might possess. A distinct contrast between the ethereal and 
the tangibly real appears in placing his work beside Shelley's. 
The rich nature of Keats dwelt closely with the visible pa- 
geant of the world, deriving from the ebb and flow of material 
beauty some intimate knowledge of deeper significance. His 
tragic devotion to the literature of long ago, his rapture over 
The Faerie Qiieene, his wonder at the simple grandeur of 
Greek poetry, filled him with uneasy desire to give to eternity 
his share of perfect art. The careless readers of Keats find 
in him only a glowing delight of the senses, but thoughtful 



l6 THE ROMANTIC MOVEMENT. 

critics have seen in him the promise of unattained supremacy 
over poetic achievement. Yearning for knowledge of hfe's 
real meaning and for the hidden truths of overmastering beau- 
ty touched his youthful poetry with a depth of personality sel- 
dom equalled. 

Endymion, that much discussed and abused poem, shows 
how he clung to Greek mythology, interpreting it with gen- 
uine romantic feeling. The story of the love of Diana for the 
beautiful shepherd, Endymion, was told by him with the aid 
of many fantastic incidents and wild luxury of language, more 
as an effort to try his skill in composition than as an offer- 
ing to the severe world of practical philosophy. Endymion 
is possessed of all the faults attributed to it by Keats in his 
prefatory note yet it has a place in literature of great merit. 
The poetic instinct, thoroughly alive, appeared in every line 
of this epic poem, not so much in dramatic portraiture as in 
magic power of description. Acute observation, coupled with 
a lingering melody of verse, has inspired later poets who 
find in Keats that direct subjection to the influences of 
form and color, sound and fragrance, which must precede the 
writing of thoroughly great poetry. In these passages, fol- 
lowing, there is unusual objective distinctness, — 

' ' 'Twas a lay 
More subtle-cadenced, more forest wild 
Than Dryope's lone lulling of her child ; 
And nothing since has floated in the air 
So mournful strange ;" 



THE ROMANTIC MOVEMENT. 1 7 

and 

" Under the brow 
Of some steep mossy hill, where ivy dun 
Would hide us up, although spring leaves were none ; 
And where dark yew-trees, as we rustle through. 
Will drop their scarlet-berry cups of dew? 

O thou would'st joy to live in such a place ! 
* ***** 

For by one step the blue sky should'st thou find. 
And by another, in deep dell below, 
See, through the trees, a little river go 
All in its mid-day gold and glimmering. 
Honey from out the gnarled hive I'll bring, 
And apples, wan with sweetness, gather thee." 

Wherever he looked he saw infinite beauties of changing 
nature, variations of hght fitted to enthrall his eye with new 
wonder. To reproduce these sensations in language of striking 
originality and tense concentration was the delight of his soul. 
The instructiveness of Endymion to the student of poetic art 
cannot be overestimated. The poem is perhaps too immature 
in general conception to delay the serious-minded reader, but 
for those who find joy in the sight of a forming mastery of art, 
this will be a jewelled treasury. Page after page yields its 
store of verses where language is made anew by his com- 
pelling grasp of the power of single words, demonstrative 
epithets, impressive compounds, and all the values of diligently 
appointed phrases. In the most simple portions of his work 
there is constant proof that his art was a thing sacred; his 
whole desire was to keep freshly vivid the belief that 



1 8 THE ROMANTIC MOVEMENT. 

" Some shape of beauty moves away the pall 
From our dark spirits." 

His other poems have more finish, more exactness of touch, 
and in them we find the greater grasp of actual Hfe. The Ode 
to a Nightingale contains the very outcry of the day for escape 
from the perplexities of man's estate. Unequalled for the pure 
power of imaginative brooding is The Ode on a Grecian Urn. 
He projects into absolute reality the cold sculptured figures. 

" What little town by river or sea-shore, 
Or mountain-built with peaceful citadel, 
Is emptied of its folk, this pious morn? 
And little town, thy streets for evermore 
Will silent be ; and not a soul to tell 
Why thou art desolate, can e'er return." 

The variety of Keats's early vi^ork is v^^onderful, while even 
more wonderful is the determination, so evident there, to mas- 
ter technique. His apprenticeship to poetry was eager, and 
triumphant, too, for he has left us some flawless bits of verse 
more instinct with true music than that of most of his contem- 
poraries. The ode, the sonnet, and the ballad he used with 
consummate art, marshalling his vivid imagery so skilfully 
that more than once he touched perfection. 



KtUtam Worliauinrtlj: "®lj? fExrursuin." 



After many vicissitudes the fame of Wordsworth has been 
thoroughly estabUshed; he is regarded as one of the foremost 
English poets, distinctively Enghsh, for he shows little evidence 
of influences affecting him from other literatures. His burning 
sympathy with France during the period of the Revolution 
became lessened as he saw the practical working out of her 
doctrines; his pleasure in the Greek and Latin classics, his 
appreciation of German masterpieces, helped to shape him in 
some degree, yet he remained to the end a poet inspired by 
English life and Hterature. An early acquaintance with the 
country Ufe of northern England fixed upon his mind certain 
ideals and certain pictures that were not effaced by later ex- 
periences at Cambridge University or by his travels in France 
or in Germany. He settled down to an uneventful life in 
the Lake Country, receiving visits from his friends, Coleridge, 
Southey, and De Quincey, corresponding with Charles Lamb 
and other distant friends, and delighting in the daily com- 
panionship of his wife and his gifted sister, Dorothy Words- 
worth, whose influence was felt by all the frequenters of the 
house. 



20 WILLIAM WORDSWORTH. 

Wordsworth stands for very definite doctrines in the realm 
of literature. With a pertinacity born of life among the im- 
movable hills he asserted liis philosophy of style and his philoso- 
phy of Hfe, superior to all the satiric criticisms which were 
launched at him by men accustomed to dictate to pubhc taste. 
In the Lyrical Ballads (1798) Wordsworth and Coleridge flung 
the gauntlet to the reading world, for they ventured to deal 
with subjects supposed to be remote from polite literature and 
they used a style that was frankly a departure from the smooth 
pseudo-classic verses of their contemporaries. The purpose 
of Wordsworth was "to choose incidents and situations from 
common life, and to relate or describe them, throughout, as 
far as was possible in a selection of language really used by 
men, and, at the same time, to throw over them a certain 
colouring of imagination, whereby ordinary things should be 
presented to the mind in an unusual aspect; and further, and 
above all, to make these incidents and situations interesting 
by tracing in them, truly though not ostentatiously, the primary 
laws of our nature."* In the work of Coleridge "the incidents 
and agents were to be, in part at least, supernatural; and the 
excellence aimed at was to consist in the interesting of the 
afifections by the dramatic truth of such emotions, as would 
naturally accompany such situations, supposing them real."f 
The Ancient Mariner, which amply fulfills these conditions, was 
the only contribution made by Coleridge to the book. The 

♦Wordsworth. Preface to Lyrical Ballads. 1800. 
+Coleridge. Biographia Literaria. Chap. XIV. 



WILLIAM WORDSWORTH. 21 

homely scenes portrayed by Wordsworth, certainly drawn to 
the life, formed a fitting sequence to the poems of the poets 
who had been seeking inspiration in nature, Thomson, 
Cowper, Gray, Burns, and Crabbe; but the author of Simon 
Lee, The Cumberland Beggar, and of Peter Bell, in his eagerness 
to be realistic sometimes became ridiculous, falling into such an 
extreme simplicity of style as to be painfully grotesque. The 
beast who 

"Upon the pivot of his skull 
Turns round his long left ear." 

could hardly serve as a tragic actor in the eyes of critics disposed 
to be carping; consequently the tale of Peter Bell to whom 

"A primrose by the river's brim" 

was only a yellow primrose, served as food for laughter. Plain 
language was, however, still used by Wordsworth in place of 
the artificial language which he despised, such as 

"In vain to me the smiling mornings shine, 
And reddening Phcebus lifts his golden fire ; 
The birds in vain their amorous descant join, 
Or cheerful fields resume their green attire." 

It fell to Wordsworth's lot to establish in modern poetry the 
language "really used by man." His style at its best has no 
equal for severe adherence to plain methods of expression 
penetrated by some dynamic power of revelation. The great 
intensity of the poet's own feehng, his solemn effort to keep 



22 WILLIAM WORDSWORTH. 

truth before his eyes, resuhed in extraordinary depth of sig- 
nificance in all his words. The Solitary Reaper has the im- 
aginative compression of great poetry in its simple, appar- 
ently commonplace diction, — 

"Will no one tell me what she sings? — 
Perhaps the plaintive numbers flow 
For old, unhappy, far-off things, 
And battles long ago. 

In addition to fixing the standard of natural expression 
Wordsworth performed for his age the task of defining the place 
of nature in the life of man. Having lived amid the grand 
mountain solitudes, he was inclined toward that solemn sense 
of communion with the universe which always follows years of 
constant association with moveless, silent forces of nature. 
Every aspect of the meadows and of the hills was known to him, 
he followed the movements of the seasons with reverential eyes, 
perceiving in all the beauty the dwelling of the divine. The 
silence and wild breadth of view there gave him a feeling 
of harmony with the primeval glory of creation, a recognition 
of the majesty of the visible universe before mankind 
subdued the stream and the forest to the uses of civiliza- 
tion. Possessed by a fervent conviction of the beneficent 
purposes of God, the poet dwelt with special pleasure upon 
the simple beauties of the less observed phenomena, immortal- 
izing hitherto ignored birds and trees and flowers through his 
acute observation of their daily life. Power of close observa- 



WILLIAM WORDSWORTH. 23 

tion mingled with respect for the language of directness has 
made him one of our greatest descriptive poets. Nature in 
wild convulsions seldom appears in his poems, but we have 
constantly glimpses of the serene sunshine in which the daf- 
fodils sway. The undoubted love of the poet for the most 
minute details appears in his incidental phrases that sud- 
denly transform the world at which we have looked only 
carelessly. In accord with the progress of science the poetry 
of this meditative writer leads the reader to a finer appreciation 
of the subtle delicacy of orgam'zation to be seen in the hum- 
blest forms of hfe as well as an appreciation of their varied beau- 
ty. We have not much descriptive poetry which is as com- 
pletely sensitive as The Green Linnet, especially in the famous 
stanza, — 

"Amid yon tuft of hazel trees, 
That twinkle in the gusty breeze, 
Behold him perched in ecstacies, 

Yet seeming still to hover; 
There! where the flutter of his wings 
Upon his back and body flings 
Shadows and sunny glimmerings. 

That cover him all over." 

Daily contemplation of the wonders of nature included a 
survey of man wrestling with the earth for his bread. The 
peasants hard at work through all the stages of summer and 
winter slowly showed him that joy and sorrow may be the 
heritage of poverty as well as of wealth. Stalwart courage, 



24 WILLIAM WORDSWORTH. 

the physical strength of sound health, and deep afFection- 
ateness were suddenly invested with grandeur, and his former 
craving for communion with God through nature became 
an unspeakable desire to know God through the elemental 
passions shared by all humanity. Town life, as described by 
Pope, was no object for his pen; he drew pictures of peasant 
life, surrounded by plenty or by wretched privation, forcing 
home to the reading world an undeniable knowledge of the 
fact that ilhteracy or poverty can not take away from men 
their capacity for feeling. Much of the modern interest in 
philanthropical institutions and labor movements is probably 
due to Wordsworth's plea for sympathy with the hearts as 
well as with the minds of men. In this he and Carlyle were 
animated by the same spirit. 

Undoubtedly the lyrics of Wordsworth are his greatest pro- 
ductions, next to the narrative sketches, for they have gracious 
melody, in their unambitious phrasing, and keen imaginative 
insight. The larger poems, The Prelude and The Excursion, 
are profoundly significant from the point of view of autobi- 
ography. Here Wordsworth has told the history of his own 
inner life, unfolding slowly the eventful influences which affected 
his imagination and helped to perfect his philosophy of life. 
There are passages of exceedingly mediocre execution where 
the poet mistook commonplace detail for inspiring incident, 
but the very best of the passages reach an exalted fervor. 
Diction and imagery are used with great restraint in his effort 
to narrate truthfully, thereby adding to the dignity of style. 



WILLIAM WORDSWORTH. 25 

His blank verse runs smoothly, here and there rivalling the 
music of the lyrics because of its pliant beauty. Altogether 
one can not well forego the stimulus and the pleasure to be 
found in this life history ; however wearisome the prosaic ele- 
ments are, they are redeemed by the revelation they give of 
Wordsworth's active intelligence absorbed in the higher prob- 
lems that are not to be forgotten by any conscientious thinker. 

The deliberate choice of his own life as a subject of po- 
etic treatment was entirely in accord with the tendency of the 
day. Autobiography was the fashion, as was natural in a time 
•of intense probing of human motives. Coleridge wrote his 
Bio graphia Liter aria in defense of the poetic practices of Words- 
worth and of himself, taking occasion to give account of many 
of his own personal experiences in the intellectual world; 
Newman in his Apologia gave a vivid recital of his religious 
development ; Ruskin in Praeterita charmingly bound together 
incidents from his life ; De Quincey's Confessions of an Opium 
Eater had fascinated a curious generation. The instinct for 
introspection doubled the distinctness of imaginative creation 
and filled the poetry and the prose of the last century with a 
very noticeable fidelity to actual experience. 



(H^uxUb Slatttb: "©IjF lEaMgB of iEIta/* 



"I was born and passed the first seven years of my life, in the 
Temple. Its church, its halls, its gardens, its fountains, its 
river .... are my earliest recollections." Surrounded 
by the busy lawyers who made that portion of London their 
abode, Lamb learned early to regard the charms of nature 
as most winning when associated with venerable custom. The 
dreamy joys of childhood and the ambitions of boyhood 
clustered about the spot where he had known so many friends. 
Those early years, even during the hardships of his life as a 
charity student at Christ's Hospital, were full of a pleasantness 
never again quite free from sorrow, for the manhood of Lamb 
was shadowed by the tragic presence of his sister Mary, whose 
fate it was to be subject to recurring fits of insanity. Her un- 
conscious taking of her mother's life left a dread in the broth- 
er's mind that never slipped away, and his guardianship was at- 
tended by continual anxiety. But during the long periods of 
immunity from this disease the comradeship of the brother 
and sister was ideal. Complete devotion ruled each one, 
accompanied by a deep intellectual sympathy that made them 
find endless joy in reading and in writing in each other's com- 
pany. Mary Lamb's quick insight served to excite her brother's 



CHARLES LAMB. 2"] 

own imaginative power, and we doubtless owe to her something 
of the variety of Charles Lamb's appreciations. 

Lamb was a clerk in the famous East India House, "chained 
to the wood" while longing for Hberty to fashion into tangible 
form the thoughts and dreams that pursued him. Despite the 
monotony of his days his sense of humor never failed, and we 
find him complaining in his own whimsical fashion over the 
columns of figures that he must add instead of indulging his 
poetic instinct. — "If I am not an imaginative poet I am in 
every sense a figurative one." 

The Essays of Elia, written at odd times when Lamb was 
free from work, if not from care, appeared in The London 
Mfl^azJwe, provoking much comment and winning many friends 
for the unknown writer. Under the name of Elia Lamb took 
the liberty of commenting upon men and manners, and es- 
pecially upon those in any way connected with himself. Con- 
tinual allusion was made to his own Hfe, and it is a com- 
paratively simple matter now for us to piece together the frag- 
ments into a genmne autobiography. The early days at the 
Blue Coat School in London, where he had Coleridge for fellow- 
student, the visits to the country, the old friends, the plays^ 
the books he loved, were all discussed in impromptu fashion. 
The essay, according to Lamb, was no fixed form Hke a Pro- 
crustes bed into which a man's musings must be fitted by a 
violent process. He scorned to follow the exact rule of para- 
graph, — indulging all his natural preference for the casual 
rather than the pre-determined. 



28 CHARLES LAMB. 

The charm of the Essays of Elia has never been disputed, 
except by the very unwise. There is in them the sense of a 
fine spiritual vagrancy, a wandering from meditation to medi- 
tation with no other end than simple enjoyment. Probably 
no one ever received any formal instruction from the Essays, and 
yet there is Httle literature which has such power of shaping 
the inner world of men. One learns from Lamb certain fine 
lessons in regard to conduct, in this pilgrimage of ours. He 
advocates no doctrine but that of spontaneous kindness, he 
has no interests except in the realms of imaginative pleasure. 
To read Lamb is to be carried into a world where everything 
assumes a high degree of graciousness, where all things are 
mellowed and beautified by the shining tolerance of a spirit 
that has suffered. Whatever he touches, The South Sea House, 
or A Quaker's Meeting, he surrounds with fateful personality, 
weaving into the concrete details of form and color some in- 
visible potency. With all the assumption of carelessness in 
Lamb's work there are qualities of high value. He helped to 
make literary criticism a more genuinely sympathetic exercise 
by insisting that critics should hold themselves susceptible 
to the influence of beauty in whatever guise it comes, old 
or new. It was he who awakened new interest in the old 
English dramatists of Shakespeare's day by his own en- 
joyment of their personal charm, unmeasured by cold stand- 
ards of academic taste; it was he who roused a finer in- 
sight into the high imaginative quality of portions of forgotten 
poets and prose writers. Wither, Fuller, Sir Thomas Browne. 



CHARLES LAMB. 29 

The student of literature finds in Lamb's scattered comments 
upon men and books a peculiarly inspiring help. His sure 
judgment selected only those things which founded their beauty 
upon some deeply significant grasp of truth; he favored no 
flippant or ephemeral creations, but looked with the eye of 
expert intuition for the matchless tokens of sincerity. 

Elia's method of speech was always essentially individual 
in its wayward construction, its rapid, eUiptical phrases, its 
superfluously lucid repetitions and explanations of simple fact. 
To bewilder his reader by excess, to feast him with words of 
extraordinary length and sonorousness, to torment him with 
puns and fantastic jugglery of language, to mock him with 
portentous solemnity, to puzzle him with dark allusions and 
to charm him with rich melody of phrase, all that was Lamb's 
peculiar gift. Everywhere one feels the solidity of his ac- 
quaintance with the great classics of England; his scholarship 
was extensive but never of a sort that menaced his reader's 
enjoyment. A new sense of the values of great art comes from 
knowing him, for one is made to see, and to feel as well, the 
close relation of literature to the spiritual existence of men. 
There are few writers in the annals of English letters who have 
so irrevocably mingled pathos and humor to the complete 
subjugation of men's affections, and this is because his man- 
ner of expression is so perfectly the transparent revelation of 
the fine shades of his own emotional Hfe. A swift sense of 
paradox, of the ironies that beset Ufe, created in him a mercurial 
response to the changing aspects of the moment, although he 



30 CHARLES LAMB. 

never lost that underlying grasp of eternal verities. Lamb's 
writings have found immortahty of a sort which means per- 
petual reverence on the part of those who meet him, for they 
feel an instinctive fellowship with this wilful, affectionate, 
heroic soul who could creep so near to the borderland where 
prose vanishes into poetry of memorable beauty. 



©Ijnmaa darlgk: "Sartor U^aarlua." 



Carlyle's Sartor Resartus, or the Life and Opinions of Herr 
Teufelsdroeckh, began to appear in Fraser's Magazine in 1833 
to the great consternation of readers who found nothing but 
madness in this wild and obscure masterpiece. It was long 
before the British public could be brought by critics to see that 
in Sartor Resartus was an earnest and profoundly stimulating 
philosophy of life. Once reconciled to the oddities of style and 
structure, English and Americans began to read and quote 
and enjoy the book which eventually proved to have almost 
unexampled influence in rousing idle minds to activity, be- 
coming the most cherished of volumes. 

The general plan of Sartor Resartus is found in Carlyle's 
whimsical pretense that having come into possession of the 
documents of a certain German scholar he must needs publish 
them with editorial comment. The device involved much 
confusion for readers who at first had faith in this Herr Teu- 
felsdroeckh's reahty, so vividly did Carlyle tell the story of his 
German life and experiences, but at last it became clear that 
the opinions were entirely those of Thomas Carlyle, Scotchman, 
man of letters, and philosopher. 

Sartor Resartus, or The Tailor Patched, has for chief object 



32 THOMAS CARLYLE. 

the assertion that man's spiritual being is superior to the ex- 
ternal symbols of the world, — time, space, customs, nature, and 
all the visible paraphernalia which he calls "clothes." Much 
is said here and there about the origin and history of dress from 
the creations of the tailor to the tyrannous customs which 
enfold man and keep him from joyous participation in the 
evolution of an heroic race, but it is only satirically that he 
turns his attention to purely mundane things. His devout 
Scotch nature yearned to bring men into closer and closer 
union with the Divine purpose so that they would grow more 
aware of the mysteries of the universe. To Carlyle the greatest 
misery in life was intellectual starvation, the greatest glory in- 
telligent yearning for the unfolding of truth. Himself in a 
state of rapture, intolerably tormented by the distracting ques- 
tions of poverty, physical anguish, and the cruel injustice of 
men toward each other, he pierced, to the very depths, the 
interchanges of daily joy and woe. 

In the two chapters, The Everlasting No and The Ever- 
lasting Yea, are the greatest monuments to Carlyle's keen ap- 
preciation of human questioning of the ultimate values of life. 
He knew the utter sense of desolation that can come to a suffer- 
ing human soul when it discovers its small place in a boundless 
universe, yet he knew, too, the courage that could face an un- 
known future with magnificent welcome. "There is in man 
a Higher than Love of Happiness; he can do without Happi- 
ness, and instead thereof find Blessedness." The passage in 
the chapter called Helotage beginning, — "Two men I honor, 



THOMAS CARLYLE. 33 

and no third. First, the toil-worn Craftsman that with earth- 
made Implement laboriously conquers the Earth, and makes 
her man's. ... A second man I honor, and still more 
highly: Him who is seen toihng for the spiritually indis- 
pensable; not daily bread, but the bread of Life," has the con- 
centrated fury of idealism that appears in every page. The 
book is not devoid of romantic story, notwithstanding all its 
invocations to the universal. The life of the German scholar 
in childhood and in the hours of study and of brief, unhappy 
love is pictured in winning fashion. 

Everywhere Carlyle's style has its implacable power. Writ- 
ing without regard for clear, straightforward communication 
of his views, he developed a method of expression, chaotic, 
thrilling with pent-up vigor. Familiar with the great master- 
pieces of beautiful precision, he preferred to forge for himself 
a weapon after the manner of the Titans, capable of honest 
blows if other means should fail. Inversions, in German 
fashion, dashes, exclamations, capital letters, compound words, 
parentheses, passages of wonderful music as clear and sweet 
as Alpine bells in the sunshine, passages that hurry one on with 
irresistible force, combine to amaze the novice. Once accus- 
tomed to the vagaries of Carlyle's style, one learns to love the 
passionate restlessness of his manner, to look for the sentences 
where majestic eloquence totters in the throes of his excitement. 

He kept his style from subservient imitation, although 
highly appreciative of other men's methods. The service which 
he performed for EngHsh prose is very important, for he effected 



34 THOMAS CARLYLE. 

a liberation of style from the conventional vocabulary and the 
rigidly exact structure of sentences. He led the way toward 
increased significance of diction by his emphatic use of ex- 
pressive words, long or short, elegant or popular. To convey 
thought rather than to show a mastery of grammar was his 
purpose in composition, consequently he did as all great stylists 
have done, — he made language his nimble slave, never his 
master. 

Carlyle's place in his age is one of varied significance. He 
was one of the first and the greatest preachers of the doctrine 
of human fellowship based upon constant sympathy with all 
honest toil. From him other men learned ardent ideals of 
social reorganization. As the historian of the French Revo- 
lution, depicting graphically the lurid scenes of conflict, he has 
gained a steady fame, not, indeed, for his absolute fidelity to 
fact, but for his imaginative presentation of the animating 
spirit of the people. The sympathy which he felt for all men 
under subjection gave him a special vigor of dramatic recital 
in history and in biography as well. Few writers have caught 
and fixed upon paper the dominant feature of men's personality 
with so vivid a reality. In his sketches of German life and 
literature, in his study of Doctor Johnson, in his Life of Fred- 
erick the Great, in his Life of Cromwell, and in Heroes and Hero 
Worship he is the penetrating observer of individual traits, 
tricks of manner and of thought, as well as of far-reaching 
mastery over men. Skill in pen-portraits is his, and skill in 
making vital the inner life of those great forces which have 



THOMAS CARLYLE, 35 

swayed the world. So ardent an admirer was he of all genuine 
nobility that he paid unstinted homage to the supreme minds 
of all ages, recognizing speedily the indefinable but powerful 
magnetism exerted by true heroes. 

The interest of Carlyle's own personality is one of the greatest 
sources of his influence. Violently emotional, subject to grim 
fits of despondency, he gave his wife and his friends many hours 
of wretchedness, always relieved by moods of exceeding tender- 
ness. He made httle attempt to veil his feelings, speaking 
with entire freedom and casting his writing in the mould of 
caprice. His secret of waking the allegiance of men was due 
to his power of deep spiritual interpretation of the difficult 
years in his own life. The accent of sympathy is everywhere 
a dominant part of his work. The early days of extreme 
hardship on a Scotch farm, the days of bitter anxiety in Lon- 
don when no man knew the priceless value of his defeated 
dreams, the gHmpses of supreme victory over shadow, are all 
evident in his book of oracles. Few writers have kindled so 
fierce a flame in intellectual life, nor have many used his 
method of expression, which has the sudden illuminating pow- 
er, mingled with attendant darkness, to be seen in a thunder 
storm. 



(Tljf? S^rartamtt ilott^m^nt. 



The Tractarian, or Oxford Movement, was one of those 
widely operative influences, the extent of whose power is not 
always revealed. Many men profoundly affected by this 
movement probably made no express declaration of its power; 
they simply conducted their lives more strictly in accordance 
with ideas which they had received. The original purpose of 
the Oxford Movement was declared by the group of young 
scholars who initiated it, to be an attempt to reclaim the 
Church of England from its passivity. They wished to reani- 
mate and to reorganize it, infusing into its life something of 
the vigor which characterized the Roman Catholic Church 
during the middle ages. It is easy to see that this was a side 
issue of Romanticism, the application to religion of certain 
ideas current in literature. Oxford, with all its gray glory 
of mediaeval architecture and long association with the great 
men of England, who had received their tuition in this most 
beautiful of cities, was naturally a place fitted to inspire youth 
with veneration for past greatness. The observances of the 
Roman Catholic Church possessed an outward appeal that 
was quick to kindle the religious fervor of men, sensitive to 
the subdued mystical beauty of rich vestments, tapers, and 



THE TRACTARIAN MOVEMENT. 37 

the full choruses of Roman ritual. Reform that should bring 
about a much purer administration was yet to preserve to 
Englishmen much of the ceremonial. The participants in 
the struggle discussed all sides of religious life, attempting 
to separate truth from falsehood by thorough investigation 
of church history and their rigorous inquiry into doctrine 
startled the easy conventionality of the clergy of the Estab- 
lished Church, who had become in many instances mere hire- 
lings, content to perform the offices of church service without 
any eflfort to keep aUve a devout religious life. 

Keble, Hurrell Froude, and Newman shared in* this war 
upon apathy in the church, but Newman became recognized 
gradually as the essential head of the movement, since he took 
most zealously his part in meeting the forces of opposition. 
Brief tracts, discussing matters of doctrine and of practice, were 
pubHshed for the benefit of interested readers, and sermons were 
preached in the college cathedral. Matthew Arnold's famous 
description, in the essay on Emerson, of Newman's piety and 
eloquent charm as a preacher is an often quoted tribute to the 
energy with which the cause was conducted. The influence 
of these enthusiasts was wide-spread. Questions that had 
lain dormant for years were revived and everywhere increased 
thoughtfulness upon the topics of inner Hfe was apparent. 
Throughout the university young men were eagerly following 
the doctrines and ideals enunciated by a band of high-minded 
enthusiasts, all men of scholarly attainment and winning per- 
sonahty. 



38 THE TRACTARIAN MOVEMENT. 

While the circles of thinkers were becoming wider and 
wider, the greatest figure among the apostles was accused of 
leaning toward direct Romanism, a charge later proved true 
by Newman's voluntary adoption, in 1845, of the tenets of 
the Roman Catholic Church. The shock of this step was a 
source of despair to many of the followers, who feared that 
the whole value of the movement would be lost; but although 
many recoiled, the silent influences of awakened intelligence 
continued for many years to give Oxford a kind of intellectual 
pre-eminence and to fire young divines with the spirit of ex- 
alted service. 

The way in which the movement affected literature is no- 
ticeable in the rapidly accumulated body of rehgious treatises, 
partly sermons, and partly essays, dealing with church history. 
The greatest product was, however, the work of Newman, who 
in hymns, romances, essays, expounded his attitude. New- 
man's apology for his apostasy is brilUantly presented in Apolo- 
gia Pro Vita Sua, the book which was forced from him by the 
attacks of men doubtful of his sincerity. Problems of the 
time, but more the special troubles of Newman in his growing 
separation from the Anglican church, are made clear with that 
persuasive intensity so offensive to his opponents. The record 
of the changes of faith gathers a pensive impressiveness as one 
is made familiar with Newman's difficult path in his effort to 
be loyal to his interpretation of religious life. 

Among those perhaps rather remotely touched by the ramifi- 
cations of the movement, through a reactionary mood, were 



THE TRACTARIAN MOVEMENT. 39 

Matthew Arnold and Arthur Hugh Clough, devoted friends 
during their residence in Oxford. Following the impulses of 
the thirst for ultimate truth in matters of faith, both of these 
men gradually turned from the positive religious conviction in 
which they had been trained to ways of less and less assured 
belief. Their poetry reflects passion for beauty, stern insistence 
upon truth. A warm human yearning is observable in their 
continued record of intellectual defeat and of spiritual de- 
pression. Arnold is the more deeply troubled by the inability 
of man to secure permanent proof of unseen things, while 
Clough, possessed of a more hopeful temperament, saw in Ufe, 
however mysterious its ends, every possibility for valiant en- 
deavor. 



®J][j NnufL 



The position occupied in the Elizabethan era by the drama 
has become the property of the novel in the nineteenth century. 
No other form of hterature has equalled it, in this period, in 
power of rousing the enthusiasm and the loyalty of readers. 
Great advances have been made in general principles of art, for 
out of the sentimental diffuseness of Sir Charles Grandison and 
the catalogue of rascally adventures in the picaresque novels 
of Defoe and Smollett and the hearty but often unbearable 
reahsm of Fielding, all conforming to the taste of the eighteenth 
century, was evolved a form in which the ordinary topics of 
daily hfe were approached and discussed. The height of art 
made of the novel a form almost as dramatic as the drama it- 
self, since in maintaining an impartial, objective attitude toward 
the characters lies the skill of the author. Jane Austen early 
discovered the way to almost faultless execution in her pictures 
of domestic life, where each individual is allowed to reveal his 
tastes and his personality through his own words and actions 
without the assistant comment of the author. It is this fastid- 
ious regard for the individual's rights, for the integrity of his 
position, which has made Miss Austen so beloved and honored. 
She preserved the fairness of one disengaged, disinterested, able 



THE NOVEL. 4I 

to report the truth without personal bias or without revealing 
a personal predilection for one or another of her characters, 
yet never losing her sense of the ironic in human life. Her 
ordering of plot shows a quick sense of the necessary results 
that spring from apparently trivial causes. Finely adjusted 
though slender chains link together with surprising firmness the 
various incidents that are to bring about the denouement. 
The activity of a mind skilled in analysis of human nature is 
revealed in stray sentences of pecuHarly acute comment and 
restrained but piercing satire. Occupied exclusively with the 
affairs of the drawing room, Jane Austen had not an extended 
scope, but within her circle she is admittedly without an equal. 
George EUot, writing forty years after Jane Austen, after 
many new movements had agitated England, had far more 
variety in her novels than did Miss Austen, for her interests 
had been enlarged by constant reading, by travel, and by 
famiHar association with the leading thinkers of her day. Her 
tendency was toward philosophical reflection rather than 
toward close scrutiny of individuals, and for this reason her 
narratives often lack the clear-cut, objective reality of her great 
predecessor. George Ehot was instinctively an instructor, a 
director of people's attention to the serious problems of life. 
She passed in review various provocations to evil which are em- 
bedded in human nature and sought to find some helpful solu- 
tion which would lead to courageous overcoming of difficulties. 
Domestic life with its endless perplexities, its disappointments 
and despairs, was her preferred field of observation. Here she 



42 THE NOVEL. 

probed the experiences of men and women, reveaKng a large- 
hearted sympathy that has won her many grateful admirers 
among those who have found hope in her wise and tolerant 
counsel. The centre of her doctrine was the need of human 
kind to follow the laws of duty, of obligation, to whatever 
bitterness of suffering they might lead. Her heroic types, 
Maggie TuUiver, Romola, and Dorothea all pass through a 
mental misery, common to large natures, to a purification of 
ideal nobility. The rich suggestiveness of George Eliot's 
direct homilies as well as of her dramatic pictures, her playful 
humor, her strong convictions, show her a modern philosopher 
turned artist. 

Neither Jane Austen nor George Eliot possessed the fiery 
vitality of the Bronte sisters, whose meagre experience in the 
world was interpreted in novels vibrating with passionate 
emotion. The intensity with which these sisters Hved their 
uneventful lives is shown in their stories by rapidity of move- 
ment, and powerful presentation of real characters. The 
sombre, startling revelation of their capacity for utter devotion 
has made their novels living bits of tragic drama. 

Between Jane Austen and her ardent admirer. Sir Walter 
Scott, there is a wide gulf. Scott admired the delicateness of 
her portraiture and lamented that he could write only in the 
"big bow-wow style," but probably Scott has a far larger circle 
of readers than has Jane Austen. The delight taken in his works 
is based upon a liking for action which leads a hero through 
numerous adventures in war and in peace and finally makes 



THE NOVEL. 43 

him the glorious upholder of truth, honor, and courtesy. Scott's 
boyish enthusiasm was caught by the literary movement of his 
day, and he responded to the stimulus of the old ballads and 
all the bits of early chronicle which were talked of by men of 
learning. Something of the ancient ideals of chivalry is to be 
seen in every one of his many novels. The greatest part of his 
equipment as an artist is the power to envelop his incidents 
with an atmosphere of high-hearted nobility. He holds up 
ideals of loyal bravery, of noble heroism, and fires his readers 
with an indestructible admiration for the true knight of any 
generation. Individual portraits Scott has given us, indeed, 
Ivanhoe, Rob Roy, Effie Deans, and royal personages, but his 
skill lies not so much in faithful character study as in the ability 
to suggest by broad free strokes the types he has in mind. 
Scott's descriptive power has been constantly a subject of praise, 
and here again he won his laurels by the wonderful vividness of 
general outline rather than by accuracy of close detail. His 
acquaintance with other lands and other ages is astounding. 
England, France, Palestine, Scotland, the Middle Ages, the 
fourteenth century, the sixteenth century, the palace and the 
outlaw's den, were pictured with equal vividness by Scott's 
active, delighted imagination. 

The pleasant rivalry between Dickens and Thackeray will 
probably continue long after some of the novelists of to-day are 
totally forgotten. Champions abound for each of the two men, 
eager to prove the extreme superiority of one over the other. 
No two writers could differ more in their whole outlook upon 



44 THE NOVEL. 

life or in their manner of revelation. Dickens learned through 
the hardships of terrible poverty the lessons of generosity and of 
sympathy for all who suffer at the hands of others. He was 
the dehverer of many unhappy and oppressed. The abuses 
of private schools he attacked in Nicholas Nickleby, the 
miseries inflicted upon orphans in government homes he re- 
revealed in Oliver Twist. A spirit stirring constantly in be- 
half of the downtrodden, a tenderness for all weak and de- 
fenceless creatures, made him beloved. The art of Dickens, 
judged by general standards, does not have the qualities which 
make for great distinction. In his effort to give vivid im- 
pressions he depended too much upon the method of cari- 
cature, exaggerating defects of personal appearance, or man- 
ner, until he removed his character from the common ranks 
and made of him a great exception. The 'umbleness of Uriah 
Heep, constantly accentuated, becomes tiresome after many 
readings, as do the various repetitions of other characters. 
Dickens's philosophy was exceedingly tender and marked, 
through and through, with great hopefulness, and yet he fails 
to represent for us part of the forces of life. Evil is always 
punished in his work, good is always rewarded, the hero 
and the heroine are happily united, and in the end life is 
asserted to be, after many tribulations, a most untroubled path 
of pure joyousness. 

Just here is the difference between Thackeray and Dickens. 
Thackeray saw that the troubles men endure are not always 
ended happily; he saw that renunciation of joy must often be 



THE NOVEL. 45 

made, that ambitions must be abandoned, and he saw also 
that evil is not always punished by open and apparent means. 
The injustice and cruelty which Dickens perceived in the physi- 
cal world Thackeray was aware of in the world of the spirit. 
We need the work of both men for a rounded view of Hfe, one 
supplements the other. 

Vanity Fair is a sufficient index to Thackeray's purpose in 
art. Here he presented the hfe history of Becky Sharp, keen- 
witted adventuress, who so cleverly manipulated her fortunes 
as to win the son of a peer for her husband, and who deceived 
and beguiled that husband until he finally perceived her 
treachery and flung her from him to ignominy and a shabby 
death. Thackeray's far-reaching shafts of satire are directed 
against that sort of poverty which seeks for alleviation of its life 
by means of flattery and falseness, against the sordid brutality 
of highborn personages, against the complacent self-adoration 
and duplicity of George Osborne, against the whole spectacle 
of those who buy and sell their worldhness in Vanity Fair. 
Thackeray has often been called a cynic because he attacked 
without mercy the pretentious and the selfish, but he can not 
justly have such a name. No man could be more chivalrously 
tender, more sympathetic with true nobility of Hfe. He drew 
pictures of supercilious gentility, but he also made his Ameha 
and his Dobbin representative of genuine faith and beautiful 
devotion. Unsparingly and unceasingly he revealed the hypo- 
crite, the knave, who defrauded himself or others of that tender 
love and companionship which makes Hfe happy. Though 



46 THE NOVEL. 

his eye was keen, his heart was soft in the presence of inno- 
cent truth. It is he who can reveal possibihties of joy won 
through a stricter consulting of conscience; with him happi- 
ness is not necessarily a boon of benevolent fate, it is the result 
of self-discipline. 

Thackeray's skill in characterization is almost unmatched for 
illusive reality. His people are thoroughly inhabitants of the 
world about, they have their faults and their virtues quite as 
we do and walk beside us in visible form. The imagination 
which could keep vivid the adroit ambition of Becky Sharp 
beside the passive sweetness of Amelia is one worthy of lasting 
admiration. It is impossible to escape the forcible vitality 
of these men and women who are shown us by a master artist. 
Their language itself is entirely characteristic, no two employ 
the same method of speech, no two have the same manner, or 
ways of thought. 

Plot was managed by him with less power than characters. 
There are uneven passages without any action, followed by 
chapters of concentrated event, brilliantly outlined. Part of 
this lack of thoroughly balanced incident is due to the fact 
that since the novel was published serially the author had to 
consult the exigencies of periodical climax, partly to the author's 
own inability to project and execute a coherent and compact 
plot, as perfect in organic structure as that masterpiece of 
technique, The Tale of Two Cities. 

The style of Thackeray is one of the greatest charms which 
endears him to readers, it is so intimately the reflection of the 



THE NOVEL. 47 

man, sensitive and alert; despite its apparent carelessness 
there is a due observance of the laws which make a piece of 
literature memorable. Humor, varying from sharp satire 
to playful raillery, appears everywhere, to interrupt the course 
of events and to bring the reader suddenly to a sense of the 
practical present application of truths. Thackeray gibes at 
himself and at all men with his endless asides and confidential 
confessions, yet the interruption serves to add to the strength 
of the author's control over his readers. His manner has 
a certain distinction unUke the striking qualities of Dickens's 
work. Familiarity with Uterature gave him many pertinent al- 
lusions, many suggestive images, as well as an authoritative 
ordering of phrases. Breadth of knowledge, large vocabula- 
ry, a fine sense of the demands of beauty, shaped Thackeray's 
style to simplicity in which every word bears the mark of ex- 
perienced art. 

The most eminent novelist of to-day, George Meredith, con- 
tinued the work of his predecessors but he added a profound 
philosophical knowledge to dramatic insight. Thoroughly in 
touch with the profound thought of his day, he brought the 
acuteness of his perception to bear upon society; scrutinizing 
men, and especially women, from a true scientific standpoint. 
The vigorous intellectual power of the author appears in his 
strongly knit narratives, all deeply contemplative of vital issues 
of a world in which the keen spiritual insight of women serves 
to precipitate many significant crises. Plot and character- 



48 THE NOVEL. 

study are managed by him with a free, powerful method, 
somewhat hindered by his involved style. As poet and as 
novelist he is the greatest living force in Enghsh letters. 



ISob^rt Irommttg: "aTIjf IJtng nnh % lank/* 



The invulnerable optimism of Browning has made him the 
elected companion of the wayfarers of the late nineteenth 
century. Echoing through all the rough and jagged verse, 
through all the obscurities of his most tortuous style, there is 
a supreme faith that carries conviction to those who listen to 
his words. The method of Browning was not that of per- 
suasive pleading, it was at once and forever that of royal fiat 
and assertion. Throughout his life Browning grasped his 
desires with sure hand, beating back his opponents with au- 
thoritative gesture. The idol of his parents, he became early 
accustomed to a friendly response from his world, and from 
tutors, from friends, from books, he took what pleased him, 
with a high spirit of just harmony in things. When he fell 
in love with the delicate idealism of EUzabeth Barrett, he over- 
came the difficulties of courtship and marriage with the same 
strong will, carrying her to the Italy which became for both 
the poets, "the land of the heart's desire." 

Knowing little of the harsh suffering with which poverty and 
sickness may dower mankind. Browning had not much to say 
of those hours when torture wrings from the human soul utter 
repudiation of all good. Protests against social inequalities 

4 



50 ROBERT BROWNING. 

were also foreign to his nature. His interests were primarily 
in those spiritual intanglements brought about by the wilful 
acts of men. The themes which engage him are defeated good 
intentions, the despair which springs from failure, the separa- 
tion which is caused by ignorance of the true laws of love, and 
all the perplexing problems of human adjustment. There is 
in the work of Browning astonishing variety of motif, for he was 
a poet of large appreciations and unceasing observation. The 
tangles made by the intricacies of feminine personaUty afforded 
him much material; he was gifted in the art of recognizing 
unspoken motives and remote impulses to action. Few poets 
have insisted so eagerly upon the necessity for struggle in 
this Life of ours. Something of the doctrines of evolution 
appears in nearly every one of Browning's poems, for his con- 
stant watchword is "combat," the effort to disable older errors 
in order to advance to a glorious future. Rabbi Ben Ezra shows 
his opinion of the high revelations which come with advancing 
age. Paracelsus tells of the alternate despair and hope of the 
mediaeval physician in his yearning for more complete mastery 
of himself and life's perfection. Pippa Passes is the tale of 
Pippa, the silk weaver, who on her one holiday passes, singing, 
by the lives of various persons and opportunely turns them 
from evil by the pure beauty of her songs. Throughout the 
shorter poems there is quick stimulus to the reader to engage 
in the task of winning his soul through whatever of good or of 
evil life may bring. 

The Ring and the Book, usually called Browning's master- 



ROBERT BROWNING. 5 1 

piece, is somewhat tedious in its length and in its disregard 
for the more appeaUng quaHties of style, but it is thoroughly 
representative of his ideals and of his manner. The story, 
suggested by an old ItaHan manuscript found by him, was the 
tragic record of the Ufe of Pompilia, daughter of two sordid 
people who sold their thirteen-year-old girl in marriage to the 
wicked and avaricious Count Guido Franceschini. Pompilia, 
unable to endure her terrible life with the count, accepted 
the aid of a young priest, Caponsacchi, to save herself and 
her child, but just at the moment when danger seemed to 
be over the angry husband appeared, murdered the parents 
of PompiHa, and gave her her death blow. Of the trial of 
Guido and of PompiHa, of the witnesses on both sides, of 
the final verdict against Guido, Browning has given record 
in his favorite form, the dramatic monologue. The Ring and 
the Book is made up of a series of long recitals of the history 
of Pompilia's married life together with various bits of evi- 
dence. "Half Rome," "The Other Half Rome," "Tertium 
Quid" report, Guido bears witness for himself, Caponsacchi 
and Pompilia give their testimony, and after some other 
less important speeches the Pope gives his verdict against 
Guido, who in a last passionate appeal reaches a climax 
of dramatic vigor. 

The poem is not a drama, but a vividly dramatic series of 
monologues in which the writer has exhibited all his marvellous 
skill in detecting the individual traits of his various personages. 
The differences between PompiHa and Guido in temper- 



52 ROBERT BROWNING. 

ament, in ideals, in motives, in action, are shown by the 
artist's singularly vigorous power of character analysis. The 
diversity of mind and character portrayed here is abundant 
testimony to the poet's wide acquaintance with mankind. 
Shrewd judgment as well as sympathetic tenderness appears 
in his method of allowing each character to reveal itself 
to the very innermost secrets of the heart. Pompilia, "per- 
fect in whiteness," is wonderfully realized by the poet's art, 
and her simple unfolding of a life of grief is touched through- 
out with the accent of supreme renunciation. Character study 
was the first and dearest object of Browning's endeavor, and 
in this poem he made his enduring fame. 

The general motif of this dramatic poem was to reveal the 
dark sufferings of marriage without love. Browning's own 
transcendent happiness had a few years before been shattered 
by his wife's death, but the vivid presence of perfect love was 
beside him in his picturing of the wretchedness and shame 
attendant upon such a crime as that wrought by PompiHa's 
parents. The plea for conservative judgment of men is con- 
tinually emphasized in the poet's satiric rendering of bigotry 
and prejudice's testimony against pure truth. A terrible 
arraignment of society is voiced in this extended account of 
false testimony, of human cupdity, treachery, and cruelty. 
The solution of the problems is to be found in every page of 
the poem, for the dramatist here attacks the question of evil 
with his most mature philosophy. 

Notice must also be taken in this poem of Browning's great 



ROBERT BROWNING. 53 

intimacy with all things Italian. Long residence in that 
country and scholarly investigation of her history had given 
him an alert knowledge of the characteristics of all classes, and 
while the truths presented are of universal application, the 
setting in its minor details constantly recalls Italy. 

The style of The Ring and the Book is characteristically 
careless. There is at all times a lack of compression which 
makes the poem seem far too diffuse, but part of this is due to 
earnest desire to reproduce the inane garrulity of the ordinary 
speaker in life's court. Certain passages such as the famous 
invocation, — 

"O lyric Love, half angel and half bird, 
And all a wonder and a wild desire, — " 

and bits from Pompilia's own sad speech, or from the Pope's 
judicial comment, are full of exquisitely lyric beauty while 
other passages are unpardonably prosaic. Browning's liking 
for abrupt and striking forms of expression, his delight in inver- 
sion, hiatus, and uncouth diction, appear in the unintelhgible 
language of Dominus Hyacinthus with his passion for legal 
Latin. Alternate terseness and long flowing passages of ab- 
solute lucidity combine to irritate the reader, who is so often 
forced by the poet's condensed epigrams to wrestle with ideas 
three-fourths hidden. 

There is no lack of concrete vividness in the best of Brown- 
ing's work: Saul, Abt Vogler, Rabbi Ben Ezra, and many other 
of the shorter poems bring forward pictures and imagery of 



54 ROBERT BROWNING, 

peculiar luminousness. Nothing could be more perfectly ren- 
dered than such passages as that in Love Among the Ruins, — 

"Where the quiet-colored end of evening smiles, 

Miles and miles, 
O'er the solitary pastures where our sheep. 

Half asleep. 
Tinkle homeward through the twilight, stray or stop. 

As they crop." 

He knew how to polish his lyrics to melodious perfection, he 
could drill blank verse to complete submission in portions of 
The Ring and the Book, but his one marked defect was his 
indifference to the reader's rights; he failed to work long enough 
over details to give coherence and stately harmony to his 
conceptions. It is partly this ignoring of concrete form that 
made his dramas ineffective upon the stage. The com- 
plex issues of embattled wills must be revealed by something 
more than mere language if an audience is to grasp the pas- 
sionate significance of the struggle. Intense absorption in 
spiritual mysteries kept Browning from revealing all that he 
knew about the visible world which he loved so ardently, and 
his preoccupation with the ethical overcame his sense of the 
aesthetic, turning him into a teacher rather than a perfect 
artist. 



BoBBftti unh ttj? Pr^-Eapl|arltt0 Mammtnt 



Another outgrowth of the Romantic Movement is to be seen 
in the Pre-RaphaeHte Movement, which through the inter- 
mediation of painting entered and affected EngKsh literature. 
Dante Gabriel Rossetti, Holman Hunt, and John Everett 
Millais, together with some other young painters, determined 
to bring into English art more of the simplicity and natural 
beauty to be seen in the work of those painters who lived before 
Raphael, and to this end formed, in 1848, the Pre-Raphaelite 
Brotherhood. They considered English art conventional and 
devoid of the illusive charm which should surround great 
conceptions. Yearning for a return to principles actuating 
Fra Angelico and Perugino in the fifteenth century, when art 
was a method of devotion, not a mere trade, they set about to 
execute pictures embodying their beliefs. The spirit of lofty 
rebellion brought them at first only contempt for their pictures, 
so careless of all but significance, but at length Ruskin, the 
dictator of English art criticism, recognized the truth of their 
motives and led the public to allegiance. 

The principles governing these reactionaries were few but 
rigid. They insisted upon painting from Ufe, and instead of 
changing models in order to win beauty in every detail of face 



56 ROSSETTI AND THE PRE-RAPHAELITE MOVEMENT. 

or figure, they copied, scrupulously, one model who might 
have certain awkward lines of body with the most haunting 
beauty of countenance. The famous picture by Millais, 
Lorenzo and Isabella, in illustration of the feast in Keats's 
The Pot of Basil, contained actual portraits of living persons. 
Here there was extreme realism verging almost on the grotesque. 
Landscape, in their paintings, was the faithful study of nature, 
for the artists took their easels out of doors and painted what 
they really saw. The paintings of Rossetti and of his disciple, 
Burne- Jones, show the perfection of the ideals of the Pre- 
Raphaelite Brotherhood. Again and again Rossetti painted 
the face of Elizabeth Siddal, who became his wife, dwelling 
with a lover's insight on each line and curve that helped to 
distinguish her beauty. His Beata Beatrix is a faithful 
portrait of her, made after her death, showing how deeply 
her husband had felt the outer revelation of her spirit. The 
coloring used by these artists has a special charm through its 
simplicity. Deep color, in mediaeval fashion, massed so that 
it presented an immediate appeal to the eye is seen in the work 
of Rossetti. The Beata Beatrix is executed in peculiarly rich 
dark effects, in which dim green is seen on the figure of dream- 
ing Beatrix, the bird who bears the symbolic yellow poppy is 
deep crimson, and so is the figure of Love advancing in the 
distance. 

In the Pre-Raphaelite literature these same characteristics 
are to be noted, for Rossetti and William Morris, its chief rep- 
resentatives in verse and prose, delighted in transferring to 



ROSSETTI AND THE PRE-RAPHAELITE MOVEMENT. 57 

language much of the concrete vividness and simplicity of 
painting. The organ of the Brotherhood w^as The Germ, 
published quarterly in 1850, and containing The Blessed Dam- 
ozel, by Rossetti, and other important works. WiUiam Mor- 
ris, attracted by the spell of the brotherhood, turned his 
genius and his fortune to service, devoting himself to practical 
application of the laws enunciated. His life-long endeavor 
was to surround humanity with beautiful objects for daily use 
in place of the tawdry ornaments in favor. He interested him- 
self in older EngUsh writers as well as in the literature of the 
north and of the south. Epics, translations, romances, came 
from his hand, with quick enthusiasm. 

The work of Rossetti, less hasty than that of Morris, was 
pervaded by some subtle wonder of creative power. Rossetti 
has, with Keats, suffered at the hands of critics who deny art 
any visible beauty, who cannot appreciate the fact that a wise 
enjoyment of warm coloring and exquisite form may be merely 
one way of approaching a profound truth. Rossetti knew 
how essential outer values are in translating significance 
of inner ideals. His sonnet cycle. The House of Lije, is one 
of the masterpieces of the century, being the utterance of a love 
almost unparalleled for intensity and sweetness. Such an ac- 
knowledgment of the vitahty of a human soul we seldom see. 
The revelation of the supreme joy of human love, together with 
the anguish brought by the death of the beloved, is wrought 
out in language often mystical in spite of Rossetti's depend- 
ence upon the concrete reality of physical beauty. The rare 



58 ROSSETTI AND THE PRE-RAPHAELITE MOVEMENT. 

quality of deep symbolism in his sonnets arrests attention that 
is merged in a species of awe over a power that could so ennoble 
and glorify experience. Rossetti had no prophetic message 
to give the world as Browning had, but he was ordained to 
bring a sudden and dominating revelation of the emotional 
grandeur of purified love. The foreign inheritances of the 
painter, who was of Italian blood, together with some instinct- 
ive tendency toward loveliness of form, helped him to a fe- 
licity of imaginative phrase unusual in the more didactic 
work of his contemporaries. The Monochord, especially in 
the last lines, exhibits this wonderful capacity for profound 
suggestiveness of imagery together with the prevailingly pen- 
sive intonation of his music, — 

"Oh! what is this that knows the road I came, 
The flame turned cloud, the cloud returned to flame. 
The lifted, shifted steeps and all the way? — 
That draws round me at last this wind-warm space, 
And in regenerate rapture turns my face 
Upon the devious coverts of dismay?" 

More extended consideration of his work has inclined our later 
critics to admit that his predominance in technique is really 
accompanied by a nobility of conception as genuinely natural 
as any Pre-Raphaelite painting can be. A certain feehng of 
regret, even, is noticeable, as this delayed appreciation comes 
too late to do full honor to a creative genius endowed with 
remarkable insight into the region where spirit is the reality 
and substance the illusion. 



Haltrr pat^r: "ilanua tl|^ ^pxmrmn" 



Walter Pater has been for more than twenty years "the god 
of their idolatry" who look for fine artistic performance in 
mere prose, and the object of their ridicule who seek in prose 
for plain, unvarnished facts. Probably few other blameless 
citizens of the world have had so many strictures passed upon 
their moral character as this serious student of the beauti- 
ful endured. He was called an "aesthete," a dabbler in ex- 
otic beauties and, as in most cases, these acrimonious libels 
were despatched by persons who did not do him the justice of 
investigating his case. One of the most admirable traits in 
Pater's character was his entire dislike of the polemical; he 
had no desire to avenge his wrongs by argument, but preferred 
to go on his quiet course, leaving time to impartial judgments. 
The facts of his life and of his opinions were not impressed 
very markedly upon his generation. He was a lover of quiet 
and unostentatious existence, indulging himself in the friend- 
ship of a few congenial men and women, but devoting his 
energies to his work. His life, spent almost entirely at Oxford, 
with the exception of visits to France and to Italy, possessed 
"all the sweet food of academic institution" of which Charles 
Lamb was defrauded. The inherent studiousness of Pater's 



6o WALTER PATER. 

nature made him take kindly to the seclusion of college halls, 
where he performed his duties as Fellow of Brasenose College 
with great punctiliousness. A monastic quiet dedicated to 
learning was as dear to him as to any of the inhabitants of the 
old reUgious houses where learning was cherished during the 
middle ages. 

All of Pater's writing is little more than a silent revelation 
of his own ideals as they had been shaped by reading and by 
reflection. Whatever he wrote, he brought to his task a most 
acute knowledge of one human spirit. Much of his own view 
of Hfe may be seen in his masterpiece, Marius the Epicurean, 
the recital of a young Roman's Hfe history during the second 
century of the Christian era. Hardly to be called a novel in 
our sense of the word, this book is bare of all effort to be a 
record of outward incidents. We follow the life of the boy 
from his early days in the country villa to his departure for 
Rome and his subsequent experiences in that city. There is 
enough of concrete setting and vivid picture of the imperial 
city in the years of its splendor, but the main interest of the 
story is in the experiments made by Marius with various 
philosophical doctrines in his earnest endeavor to arrive at 
some satisfying form of belief. The grave young man is made 
to walk before us with the fascination of a real being aware of 
the pomps of the world, but secretly absorbed in speculation 
over the invisible spirit so persistently claiming recognition. 
Passing the various philosophies of Greece and Rome in re- 
view, the youth felt in each the absence of that close sympathy 



WALTER PATER. 6 1 

which was shadowed in the Christian faith, "just then making 
itself felt" among the more sensitive people of the city. His 
introduction, in the midst of pagan surroundings, to the initial 
stages in the secret growth of Christianity makes a series of 
scenes full of rare beauty. The absence of the common trait 
of romance is scarcely noted, so subtly does Pater engage the 
reader's sympathies in the piu-suit of Marius for hidden knowl- 
edge. 

Ostensibly a story of a special historical epoch, Marius the 
Epicurean is in reality the history of any highly thoughtful 
person who depends for his happiness upon seeking some 
rational explanation of the universe, however mystical his 
appreciations may be in reality. Pater knew by some finer 
laws the large portion of doubt and anguish which follows the 
course of intellectual growth, and he knew, likewise, the various 
mundane disappointments, the failures, and the irritations 
which distract the most hopeful natures. There is a great 
wealth of observation in the work, given quietly enough, but 
profoundly suggestive to the reader who is watching for 
references to those matters of human conduct. The need of 
wise self-control and of patient endurance is urged if we are 
to accompHsh the true ends of life and gather all the fruit of 
experience. 

The somewhat subtle abstractness of diverse theories is amply 
relieved by bits of picturesque detail shov^dng in him a con- 
stant response to the appeals of nature and perfected art. 
The landscape of Italy is made vivid in a fashion that has 



62 WALTER PATER. 

warmed the hearts of many travellers in that land of beauty. 
As a descriptive artist Pater has few equals in power of render- 
ing the loveliness of concrete things which by some trick of 
nature or by some association with man have a wonderfully 
momentous charm. 

Defects in his style there undoubtedly are, — awkward mazes 
of clause and phrase, over-elaborateness, — but in his ordina- 
ry mood Pater's manner arrests the roving imagination and 
fixes it upon genuine art. To the hasty reader he presents 
insuperable difhculties, for he worked conscientiously, as 
does a worker in some costly material, seeking to exhaust all 
the values of substance without any waste. There is always 
present in his work a solicitousness for graceful cadences and 
for delicate gradations, where a proper regard for the individ- 
ual word is apparent. Pater's diction is admittedly marked 
by nicety of choice; there are backgrounds of association with 
his words giving them a richer significance than is usual, ex- 
tracting all the "latent imagery." In the essay on Style his 
creed is written down with exact philosophical care. 

Pater's place in literature is assured first of all by his solid 
scholarship. Philosophy was his chosen subject, and in Plato 
and Platonism as well as in Marius the Epicurean we can follow 
the breadth of his learning. Archaeology, painting, sculpture, 
and poetry were also the object of severe study. He wrote 
slowly through his long years of scholarship, with a most in- 
tense regard for truth, adding more and more weight to his 
authority. As a critic he has a special persuasiveness, not be- 



WALTER PATER. 63 

cause of iron rules, but because of his own inborn appreciative- 
ness. It is well to formulate his theories, but it is better to 
follow the concrete application and find the enjoyment of 
beauty by following in his footsteps, reading attentively what 
he wrote. A power of creative imagination was joined with 
his critical insight, and the extraordinary fusion of these has 
made his productions of unique clearness. Imaginary Por- 
traits and Appreciations show how easily he penetrated the 
subtleties of character, finding many intricacies of tempera- 
ment undreamed of by the less delicately organized. It is 
not by brilliant display that he becomes his reader's interpret- 
er of hidden holy things, it is by his faithfulness to his 
shining ideals of things actually existent. 

As a prose writer he holds the position of arbiter. The pre- 
dominance of prose at the present time shows certain practical 
truths about the reading world, and since the poet has lost the 
audience which crowded about him in past generations, it is 
well that he should change his medium and still appeal to the 
imagination. Cold expository prose has its function, and so 
has the more colored, figurative prose. Pater, more than any 
other prose writer of the century, set a fashion of careful 
workmanship, claiming for his instrument the same fastidious 
polish given to verse-form. The desire on the part of so many 
young writers to use the unmetrical form powerfully owes 
much to the stimulus of his work. Over-emphasized, their 
desire leads to mawkish sentimentality, but controlled will be 
of noble service to the laws of order and intellectual precision. 



l|tatonraI ([Ptrtlttt?. 



POETS. 



(The names of the most important works are given. An asterisk indicates a work of 
special interest to the general reader.) 

I. William Wordsworth. 1770-1850. 
*Lyrical Ballads (with Coleridge). 1798. 
*The Prelude. 1 799-1805. 
The White Doe of Rylstone. 1807-1815. 
The Excursion. 18 14. 

Sonnets, Songs, Odes, Dramas, Narrative Poems, 
and Prose Prefaces. 
II. Samuel Taylor Coleridge. 1772-1834. 
*The Ancient Mariner. 1798. 
*Christabel. 1816. 
Odes, Narrative Poems, Dramas, Translations, 
Expository Prose, and Biographia Literaria 
(autobiographical and critical). 
III. Robert Southey. 17 74-1 843. 
The Curse of Kehama. 1810. 
Epics, Lyrics, Translations, and Miscellaneous 
Prose. 



HISTORICAL OUTLINE. 6$ 

[V. Sir Walter Scott. 1771-1832. 

*The Lay of the Last Minstrel. 1805. 
Marmion. 1808. 
The Lady of the Lake. 1810. 
Songs, Ballads, Romances, and Miscellaneous Prose. 

V. George Gordon Lord Byron, i 788-1824. 
*Childe Harold. 1812-1818. 
The Giaour. 1813. 
Manfred. 181 7. 
Don Juan. 1819-24. 
Lyrics, Dramas, Satires. 

VI. John Keats. 1795-1821. 
*Endymion. 1818. 
*Hyperion. 1820. 

Odes, Sonnets, Ballads, Dramas, Narrative Poems. 

VII. Percy Bysshe Shelley. 1792-1822. 

Queen Mab. 18 13. 
*Alastor. 18 16. 
*The Cenci. 18 19. 
*Prometheus Unbound. 1820. 
*Adonais. 182 1. 

Lyrics, Dramas, Epics, Defense of Poetry (prose). 
VIII. Walter Savage Landor. 1775-1864. 

Gebur. 1798. 

Lyrics, Dramas, Epics. 

Imaginary Conversations. 1824-1853 (prose). 



66 HISTORICAL OUTLINE. 

Pericles and Aspasia. 1836 (prose). 
*The Pentameron. 1837 (prose). 
IX. Alfred Lord Tennyson. 1808-1892. 
The Princess. 1847. 
*In Memoriam. 1850. 
Maud. 1855. 

Idylls of the King. 1859-85. 
Enoch Arden. 1864. 
Lyrics, Dramas. 

X. Elizabeth Barrett Browning. 1809-1861. 

Translation of ^schylus's Prometheus Bound. 1833. 
The Cry of the Children. 1843. 
♦Sonnets from the Portuguese. 1850. 
Aurora Leigh. 1856. 

XL Robert Browning. 181 2-1889. 

Pauline. 1833. 
♦Paracelsus. 1835. 

Sordello. 1840. 
♦Pippa Passes. 1841. 
♦The Ring and the Book. 1868-9. 

Dramatic Monologues, Lyrics, Epics, Dramas. 
XII. Matthew Arnold. 1822-1888. 

Empedocles on Etna. 1852. 

Merope. 1858. 

Sohrab and Rustum. 1855. 
♦Elegies and Prose Works (see under prose writers). 



HISTORICAL OUTLINE. 67 

XIII. Arthur Hugh Clough. 1819-1861. 

The Bothie of Tober-na-Vuolich. 1848. 
Amours de Voyage. 1862. 
*Dipsychus. 1862. 
*Lyrics. 
XIV. Dante Gabriel Rossetti. 1828-1882. 

Dante and His Circle. 186 1. (Translations.) 
♦The House of Life. 1870-81. 
Lyrics, Ballads. 
XV. William Morris. 1834-1896. 
Guenevere. 1858. 
The Life and Death of Jason. 1867. 
*The Earthly Paradise. 1868-70. 
Lyrics, Translations, Prose Romances. 
XVI. Algernon Charles Swinburne. 1837 — . 
*Atalanta in Calydon. 1864. 
Poems and Ballads. 1866-89. 
Songs before Sunrise. 187 1. 
Tristram of Lyonesse. 1882. 
Miscellaneous Prose. 
XVII. George Meredith. 1828 — . 
*Modern Love. 1862. 
A Reading of Earth. 1888. 

essayists. 

I. Francis Jeffrey. 1773-1850. 
Literary Criticism. 



68 HISTORICAL OUTLINE. 

II. Charles Lamb, i 775-1834. 
*Essays of Elia. 1823-1833. 
Critical Essays. 

Tales from Shakespeare (with Mary Lamb). 
II. William Hazlitt. 1778-1830. 

Literary Criticism. 
IV. Thomas De Quincey. 1785-1859. 

The Confessions of an Opium Eater. 182 1. 
Biography, Criticism. 
V. Thomas Carlyle. i 795-1 881. 
*Sartor Resartus. 1833-1834. 

The French Revolution. 1837. 
*Heroes and Hero-worship. 1841. 
Past and Present. 1843. 
History of Frederic the Great. 1858-1865. 
Translations, Essays. 
VI. Thomas Babington Macaulay. 1800-1859. 
Essays. 1825-1843. 

History of England from James II. 1 849-1 861. 
VII. John Henry Newman, i 801-1890. 

Tracts for the Times (part). 1833-1841. 

Tract go, most famous. 
Parochial Sermons. 1834-1842. 
Plain Sermons. 1 846-1 848. 
♦Idea of a University. 1852. 
♦Apologia Pro Vita Sua. 1864. 



HISTORICAL OUTLINE. 69 

VIII. John Ruskin. i8 19-1900. 
♦Modern Painters. 1843-60. 
*Seven Lamps of Architecture. 1849. 

Stones of Venice. 1851-53. 

Pre-Raphaelitism. 1851. 

Unto this Last. 1862. 
*Sesame and LiHes. 1864. 

Ethics of the Dust. 1865. 

Crown of Wild Olive. 1866. 

Fors Clavigera. 1871-84. 

Munera Pulveris. 1872. 

Mornings in Florence. 1875-77. 
*Pra;terita. 1887-8. 
IX. Matthew Arnold. 1822-1888. 

On Translating Homer. 1861. 
*Essays in Criticism. 

First Series, 1865. Second Series, 1888, 

The Study of Celtic Literature. 1867. 
♦Culture and Anarchy. 1869. 

Literature and Dogma. 1873. 
X. Walter Pater. 1839-1894. 
*The Renaissance. 1873. 
*Marius the Epicurean. 1885. 
♦Imaginary Portraits. 1887. 
♦Appreciations. 1889. 

Plato and Platonism. 1893. 

Greek Studies. 1895. 



7© HISTORICAL OUTLINE. 

XI. James Anthony Froude. i8 18-1894. 

History. 
XII. Edward Augustus Freeman. 1823-1892. 
History. 
XIII. John Richard Green. 183 7-1 883. 

History. 
XrV. John Stuart Mill. 1806-1873. 

Economics. 
XV. Herbert Spencer. 1820-1905. 
*First Principles. 1862. 
Philosophy. 
XVI. Charles Robert Darwin. 1809-1882. 
*The Origin of Species. 1859. 
The Descent of Man. 187 1. 
XVII. Thomas Henry Huxley. 182 5-1 895. 
*Man's Place in Nature. 1863. 
Protoplasm: the Physical Basis of Life. 1869. 
XVIII. John Frederick Denison Maurice. 1805-1872. 
Theology. 
XIX. Walter Bagehot. 1826-1877. 

Literary Criticism. 
XX. Minor Writers upon Miscellaneous Subjects. 

1. John Addington Symonds. 1840-1893. 

Literary criticism. 

2. Robert Louis Stevenson. 1850-1894. 

Essays. 



historical outline. 7 1 

3. Leslie Stephen. 183 2-1905. 

Biography and criticism. 

4. Algernon Charles Swinburne.! 

Criticism. 

5. Frederick Harrison. 

Criticism. 

6. John Morley. 

Criticism and biography. 

7. Henry Austin Dobson. 

Criticism, biography, lyrics. 

8. Edward Dowden. 

Criticism. 

9. Andrew Lang. 

Criticism, translation, lyrics. 

10. Mrs. Alice Meynell. 

Criticism, biography, lyrics. 

11. Violet Paget (''Vernon Lee"). 

Criticism. 

12. Edmund Gosse. 

Criticism. 

13. Augustine Birrell. 

Criticism. 

fThe following are all living writers. 



7 2 HISTORICAL OUTLINE. 

14. Arthur SYMoisrs. 
Criticism, lyrics. 

the novelists. 

(The dates given are the dates of publication.) 

I. Jane Austen. 1775-1817. 

*Pride and Prejudice. Printed 1813. 

Emma. Printed 1816. 

Northanger Abbey. Printed 18 18. 
II. Sir Walter Scott, i 771-183 2. 

Waverley. 1814. 

Guy Mannering. 181 5. 

Rob Roy. 1817. 
*The Heart of Midlothian. 18 18. 
*Ivanhoe. 1819. 

The Monastery. 1820. 
*Kenil worth. 182 1. 

Quentin Durward. 1823. 

III. The Bronte Sisters. 

Charlotte Bronte. 1816-1855. 
*Jane Eyre. 1847. 
Villette. 1853. 
Emily Bronte. 18 18-1848. 
Wuthering Heights. 1847. 

IV. William Makepeace Thackeray. 1811-1863. 
*Vanity Fair. 1847-8. 



HISTORICAL OUTLINE. 73 

Pendennis. 1848-50. 
*Henry Esmond. 1852. 
*The Newcomes. 1853-5. 

Prose Sketches, Essays, and Humorous Poetry. 
V. Charles Dickens. 1812-1870. 

Pickwick Papers. 1836-37. 

Nicholas Nickleby. 1838-39. 
*David Copperfield. 1849-50. 
*A Tale of Two Cities. 1859. 

Our Mutual Friend. 1864-65. 
VI. "George Eliot" (Mary Ann Evans). 1819-1880. 

Scenes of Clerical Life. 1858. 
*Adam Bede. 1859. 
*The Mill on the Floss, i860. 

Silas Marner. 1861. 
*Romola. 1862-63. 
*Middlemarch. 1871-72. 

Daniel Deronda. 1876. 
VII. George Meredith. 1828 — . 

*The Ordeal of Richard Feverel. 1859. 

Evan Harrington. 1861. 
*The Egotist. 1879. 
*Diana of the Crossways. 1885. 

Poetry and Essays. 
VIII. Minor Novelists. 

I. Sir Edward George BuLWER Lytton. 1803- 
1873- 



74 HISTORICAL OUTLINE. 

The Last Days of Pompeii. 

2. William Wilkie Collins. 1824-1889. 

The Woman in White. 

3. Charles Kingsley. 1819-1875. 

Alton Locke. 

4. Anthony Trollope. 1815-1882. 

Barchester Towers. 

5. Charles Reade. 1814-1884. 

The Cloister and the Hearth. 

6. Richard Doddridge Blackmore. 1825- 

1900. 
Lorna Doone. 

7. George Macdonald. 1824-1905. 

Robert Falconer. 

8. Walter Besant. 1838-1901. 

All Sorts and Conditions of Men. 

9. Robert Louis Stevenson. 18 50-1 894. 

Kidnapped. 

10. James Henry Shorthouse. 1834-1905. 

John Inglesant. 

11. Mrs. Elizabeth Gaskell. 1810-1866. 

Cranford. 

12. Mrs. Margaret Oliphant. 1828-1897. 

The Chronicles of Carringford. 

13. Mrs. Pearl Craigie ("John OUver Hobbes"). 

1867-1906. 
The Sinner's Comedy. 



historical outline. 75 

14. Mrs. Anne Thackeray Ritchie.| 

Old Kensington. 

15. Thomas Hardy. 

The Return of the Native. 

16. Mrs. Mary Arnold Ward. 

Robert Elsmere. 

17. RuDYARD Kipling. 

The Light That Failed. 

+The following novelists are still living. 



©Ij^ Btnhi^ 0f 2Itt^ratu«.* 



1 . Read through the entire work in order to get a good general 

impression. 

2. Analyze, in a second reading, 

a. Subject matter and the author's purpose in writing: 

to narrate, to describe, to expound, or to argue ? 

b. Form. 

In what class does it belong: Poetry (epic, lyric, 
or dramatic) ; Prose (essay, novel, biography) ? 

Does it conform to the rules of its class or are there 
divergencies ? 

If poetry, what scheme of versification is used and 
with what success ? 

If prose, what sense of orderly structure of sen- 
tence and of paragraph has the author ? 

Is the diction in any way remarkable? Does 
the author prefer long or short words, archaic 
or modern, single or compound, concrete or 
abstract, expressive or commonplace ? 

Is the style marked by the use of imagery ? What 
figures are used and with what success ? 

Is the style original or imitative ? 

* Consult also the opening chapter of volume IV of this series and the author's 
First Book of Poetics^ published by B. H. Sanborn & Co., Boston. 



STUDY OF LITERATURE. 77 

What appeal has the work to the reader's reason ? 
Is the work clear and coherent? 

What appeal has the work to the reader's emo- 
tion? Does the work stimulate the emotions 
or is it cold and lacking in feeling ? 

What appeal has the work to the reader's im- 
agination? Are the persons introduced made 
to seem real and living? Are the objects and 
places described in such a way that the reader 
can visuaUze them easily? 

Does the writer depend upon concrete or upon 
abstract expression? What appeals does he 
make to the reader's sense of color, of form, of 
sound, of smell, of touch, and of taste ? 

c. Relation to author. 

What is the author's personality as revealed here ? 
Does this work show any growth or change in 
his point of view as compared with his other 
works ? 

What influences of birth, education, and environ- 
ment are evident in the work ? 

d. Relation to the period. 

What influences of the age in which it was written 
are observable in the work? 

e. Relation to the nation. 

What distinctively national characteristics are 
found in the work ? What evidences of foreign 
influences ? 



libltograplja. 



GENERAL. 

Masterpieces of British Literature (Houghton, Boston, price, 
$i.oo) is an excellent collection, containing many works 
of the nineteenth century. 

British Poets of the Nineteenth Century (Sanborn, Boston, 
price about $2.00), ed, C. H. Page, is an extremely valu- 
able book that every reader should own. It contains the 
best of the shorter poems of the leading poets, together 
with many references. 

The Globe Edition of the poets (Macmillan, New York, price 
about $2.00 per volume) is an ably edited series giving 
in a single volume all the works of each poet. 

The Cambridge Edition of the poets (Houghton, Boston, 
price about $2.00 per volume) is attractively bound 
and well edited. 

The Athenaeum Press Series (Ginn, Boston, price about $1.25 
per volume) contains carefully edited selections from poets 
and prose writers. 

The Riverside Literature Series (Houghton, Boston, price $.15) 
is a briefly annotated series, very serviceable. 

The English Men of Letters Series (Macmillan, New York, 



BIBLIOGRAPHY. 79 

price about $.75) is a series of standard biographies, 
giving authoritative criticism. 

The Great Writers Series (Scribner, New York, price about 
$1.00) is a series of standard biographies, giving excel- 
lent criticism and very complete bibliographies. 

The Dictionary of National Biography is an invaluable en- 
cyclopedia to be found in every good public library, and 
should be in constant use. 

Best Books and Reader's Guide to Contemporary Literature, ed. 
Sonnenschein, are in every pubhc library. They give co- 
pious lists of reference books about all the important au- 
thors. 

Poole's Index to Periodical Literature and the A. L. A. Literary 
Index will give references to important magazine articles 
on various authors. 

Collections of Letters written by the various authors should be 
consulted freely for their intimate revelation of personal- 
ity. 

Pancoast, H. Introduction to English Literature. Holt. This 
contains an especially valuable account of modern litera- 
ture. Price about $1.25. 

Moody and Lovett. A History of English Literature. Scrib- 
ner. This contains a valuable bibliography and suggest- 
ive criticisms. Price about $1.25. 

Simonds, W. E. A Student's History of English Literature. 
Houghton. This contains suggested readings, illustra- 
tions, and general criticism. Price about $1.25. 



8o BIBLIOGRAPHY. 

Garnett and Gosse. Illustrated History of English Literature. 
Macmillan. More valuable for portraits, facsimile auto- 
graphs, etc., than for criticism. 
Books Relating to the Nineteenth Century. 

Hodgkins, L. M. Guide to Nineteenth Century Authors. 
Heath. Price about $i.oo. Gives excellent lists of crit- 
ical works. 

Archer, W. English Dramatists of To-day. London. 

Bagehot, W. Literary Studies. London. 

Beers, H. A. English Romanticism in the Nineteenth Century. 
Holt. 

Birrell, A. Obiter Dicta. London. 

Birrell, A. Res Judicatae. London. 

Birrell, A. Essays about Men, Women, and Books. London. 

Brooke, S. A. The English Poets. Scribner, 

Brownell, W. C. Victorian Prose Masters. Scribner. 

Church, R. W. The Oxford Movement. Macmillan. 

Courthope, W. J. The Liberal Movement in English Litera- 
ture. London. 

Dawson, W. J. The Makers of Modern English. Whittaker. 

Dowden, E. The French Revolution and Literature. Scrib- 
ner. 

Dowden, E. Studies in Literature. Scribner. 

Dowden, E. Transcripts and Studies. Scribner. 

Forman, H. B. Our Living Poets. 

Hancock, A. E. The French Revolution and the English 
Poets. Holt. 



BIBLIOGRAPHY. 8l 

Harrison, F. Studies in Early Victorian Literature. London. 

Herford, C. H. The Age of Wordsworth. London. 

Hutton, R. H. Literary Essays. Macmillan. 

Hutton, R. H. Modern Guides of English Thought. Mac- 
millan . 

Hutton, R. H. Essays Theological and Literary. Macmillan. 

Minto, W. Literature of the Georgian Era. Edinburgh. 

Mozeley, T. Reminiscences of Oriel College and the Oxford 
Movement. Houghton. 

Oliphant, Mrs. M. The Victorian Age of English Literature. 
Tait. 

Rawnsley, H. D. Literary Associations of the English Lakes. 
Glasgow. 2 vols. 

Saintsbury, G. W. A History of Nineteenth Century Litera- 
ture. 1 780-1895. London. 

Scudder, V. D. The Life of the Spirit in the Modern Eng- 
lish Poets. Houghton. 

Stedman, E. C. Victorian Poets. Houghton. 

Stephen, L. Hours in a Library. Putnam. 

Swinburne, A. C. Essays and Studies. Scribner. Miscella- 
nies. Scribner. 

Walker, H. The Age of Tennyson. London. 

Woodberry, G. E. Makers of Literature. Macmillan. 

Wood, E. D. G. Rossetti and the Pre-Raphaelite Movement. 
Scribner. 



82 BIBLIOGRAPHY. 



READING LISTS. 

The works named below are chosen as giving good general 
introduction to the various authors. Fuller references will 
be found by consulting bibliographies contained in these se- 
lected books. The poems and prose works chosen for reading 
are intended to serve as prefaces to the longer works mentioned 
in the outline and are illustrative of the various moods of the 
different authors. 

Wordsworth. We are Seven, Lines Composed above Tintern 
Abbey, Michael, I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud, The Soli- 
tary Reaper, The Green Linnet, Ode on the Intimations 
of Immortality, Poems to Lucy. Sonnets: To Sleep, To 
the Sonnet, On Westminster Bridge, To Milton. Arnold's 
Selections from Wordsworth gives the best portions of the 
longer poems together with the briefer poems of import- 
ance. The Globe Edition is excellent. Prefaces, ed. 
George. Life by Knight, by Myers, and by Raleigh. Crit- 
ical essays by Pater {Appreciations), Arnold {Essays), 
Bagehot {Literary Studies), Stephen {Hours in a Library). 

Coleridge. The Ancient Mariner, Christabel, This Lime Tree 
Bower, France, Hymn Before Sunrise In the Vale of 
Chamouni, Dejection. Globe Edition. Life by Camp- 
bell, by Traill, and by Caine. Essays by Pater {Appreci- 
ations), Lowell {Democracy), Brooke {Theology in the Eng- 
lish Poets), Hazlitt {My First Acquaintance with Poets). 



BIBLIOGRAPHY. 83 

Byron. Hebrew Melodies, The Prisoner of Chillon, Childe 
Harold's Pilgrimage. Arnold's Selections from Byron is the 
best introduction to the poet's works. Globe edition and 
Cambridge edition. Life by Nichol, by Noel, by T. 
Moore. Essays by Arnold (Essays), Woodherry (Makers 
of Literature). 

Shelley. Alastor, The Indian Serenade, The Sensitive Plant, 
To a Skylark, To the West Wind, Epipsychidion, Adonais, 
Prometheus Unbound. Globe edition and Cambridge edi- 
tion. Prometheus Unbound, ed. V. D. Scudder. Adonais, 
ed. W. M. Rossetti. Life by Symonds, by Sharp, by Dow- 
den (read with caution). Essays by Arnold (Essays), 
Bagehot (Literary Studies), Woodberry (Makers of Litera- 
ture). Shelley primer by H. S. Salt. 

Keats. The Eve of St. Agnes, Ode on a Grecian Urn, Ode to 
a Nightingale, La Belle Dame Sans Merci, Sonnet to Chap- 
man's Homer. Globe edition and Cambridge edition. 
Life by Colvin, by W. M. Rossetti. Essays by Arnold 
(Essays), Lowell (Among My Books), Woodherry (Makers 
of Literature). 

Tennyson. The Lady of Shalott, The Palace of Art, A Dream 
of Fair Women, Ulysses, Morte D' Arthur, Sir Galahad, 
Songs from the Princess. Globe edition and Cambridge 
edition. Life by Hallam Tennyson. Essays by Brooke 
(Tennyson), Van Dyke (The Poetry of Tennyson), Gates 
(Studies and Appreciations), Stedman (Victorian Poets). 



84 BIBLIOGRAPHY. 

Browning. My Last Duchess, Home Thoughts from Abroad, 
Saul, In a Balcony, Love Among the Ruins, The Guard- 
ian Angel, A Grammarian^ s Funeral, Andrea Del Sarto, 
Aht Vogler, Rabbi Ben Ezra, A Death in the Desert, Pippa 
Passes, Prospice. Globe edition, 2 vols, Cambridge edi- 
tion, I vol. Life by Sharp, by Chesterton, and by Cow- 
den. Berdoe, Browning Cyclopaedia, Browning's Message 
to his Time; On, Mrs., Handbook to Works 0} Browning; 
Alexander, W. J., Introduction to the Poetry of Browning; 
Brooke, The Poetry of Browning. Essays by Birrell (Obiter 
Dicta), Stedman (Victorian Poets). 

Arnold. The Forsaken Merman, Memorial Verses, The 
Buried Life, The Scholar Gypsy, Stanzas from the Grande 
Chartreuse, Thyrsis, Dover Beach, Rugby Chapel, Immor- 
tality, Heine's Grave. Globe edition. Life by Paul, by 
Russell. Essays by Gates (Selections from A mold's Prose) , 
by Stedman (Victorian Poets), Woodberry (Makers of 
Literature) . 

Clough. Say Not the Struggle Naught Availeth, Hope 
Evermore, Qui Laborat Oral, It Fortifies my Soul, Dipsy- 
chus. Selections from Clough in Golden Treasury Series 
(Macmillan). Memoir by S. Waddington. Essays by 
Bagehot (Literary Studies) , Hutton (Literary Studies). 

Rossetti. The Blessed Damozel, The Portrait, The Woods- 
purge, The King's Tragedy, Staff and Scrip, The House 
of Life. Life by Knight, by Benson. Wood, E., D. G. 
Rossetti and the Pre-Raphaelite Movement. Essays by 



BIBLIOGRAPHY. 85 

Pater {Appreciations), Swinburne {Miscellanies), Forman 
{Our Living Poets). 

Swinburne. The Pilgrims, The Garden 0} Proserpine, On the 
Cliffs, Atalanta in Calydon. Life by Wratislaw. 

Morris. A Garden by the Sea, The Earthly Paradise. Life by 
Mackail. 

Lamb. Christ's Hospital, Dream Children, Imperfect Sym- 
pathies, Old China, The Superannuated Man, A Disserta- 
tion upon Roast Pig. Temple Edition. Life by Ainger, 
with excellent criticism; by Lucas, with many anec- 
dotes and illustrative material. Essays by Birrell {Obiter 
Dicta) Pater {Appreciations), De Quincey {Biographical 
Essays) . 

Carlyle. Heroes and Hero-Worship, Sartor Resartus, Charac- 
teristics. Life by Nichol and by Garnett. Essays by 
Lowell {My Study Windows), Brownell {Victorian Prose 
Masters), Birrell {Obiter Dicta). Reminiscences by Froude 
and by Norton. 

Ruskin. Sesame and Lilies, Ethics of the Dust, Selections ed. 
by V. D. Scudder is an excellent introduction. Life by 
Mrs. Meynell, by Collingwood, by Harrison. Waldstein's 
The Work of John Ruskin, and John Ruskin, Social Re- 
former, by Hobson are good surveys of his work. 

Arnold. The Study of Poetry {Essays), Sweetness and Light 
{Culture and Anarchy), Celtic Literature. See under poets. 

Pater. The Child in the House {Miscellaneous Studies), 
Imaginary Portraits, Botticelli {Renaissance), Charles 



86 BIBLIOGRAPHY. 

Lamb {Appreciations). Selections ed. Hale. Life by- 
Benson, by Greenslet, with appreciative criticism. 

THE NOVELISTS. 

In the Temple Edition appears Jane Austen; in the Century 
Edition Scott, Thackeray, Dickens; in the Pocket Edition 
George Meredith. Other inexpensive editions are numer- 
ous. A Study 0} Prose Fiction by Bliss Perry is very 
suggestive; Raleigh's The English Novel gives an excellent 
sketch of the early novel; Cross's Development 0} the 
English Novel, and Stoddard's Evolution of the English 
Novel contain some good material, although by no means 
final estimates. Lanier's English Novel is also stimulat- 
ing. In the biographies named below will be found criti- 
cism of novels. 

Jane Austen. Life by Mrs. Madden, Adams, Beeching, Smith. 

Scott. Life by Lockhart, by Hutton. 

Brontes. Life by Mrs. Gaskell, by Birrell. 

Thackeray. Life by TroUope, by Merivale and Marzials. 

Dickens. Life by Forster, by Ward, by Marzials. 

George Eliot. Life by Cross (compiled from her journals), 
by BUnd, by Stephen, by O. Browning. A Critical Study, 
by Cooke. 

George Meredith. A Study by Hannah Lynch. Essays by 
Brownell (Victorian Prose Masters). 



^uggFBttnna tar Cluba. 



The Influence of Oxford upon English Literature 
OF THE Nineteenth Century. 

First Meeting. 

Paper i. Description of Oxford and the Colleges, illustrated 

by photographs. 
Paper 2. History of the university and brief account of il- 
lustrious men educated there before 1800. 
Paper 3. The Oxford Movement. The beginnings in the 

work of John Keble. 
Paper 4. The Oxford Movement. Tracts for the Times. 

Oxford in the Mediceval Towns Series will give much infor- 
mation, as will also Baedeker's Great Britain. For information 
in regard to the authors, consult the bibliography. 

Second Meeting. 
John Henry Cardinal Newman. 
Paper i . Early Hf e and education of Newman. 



Paper 2 
Paper 3 
Paper 4 
Paper 5 



Newman's part in the Oxford Movement. 
Account of Newman's Apologia Pro Vita Sua. 
Account of Newman's Idea of a University. 
The personality and literary style of Newman. 



For references, consult the bibliography. 



88 SUGGESTIONS FOR CLUBS. 

Third Meeting. 

Mathew Arnold and Arthur Hugh Clough. 

Paper i. Early life and education of Arnold (see Tom Brown 

at Rugby) . 
Paper 2. Early life and education of Clough. 
Paper 3. Arnold and Clough at Oxford (see Arnold's The 

Scholar Gypsy, Thyrsis, and Emerson). 
Paper 4. Arnold's views of Philistinism (see Culture and 

Anarchy). 
Paper 5. Arnold as a literary critic (see The Study of Poetry 

and Essay on Celtic Literature). 
Paper 6. Arnold's Prose Style. 

For references, consult bibliography. 

Fourth Meeting. 

Arnold and Clough. 

Paper i. The Poetry of Clough. Substance. Note influ- 
ences of Oxford Movement. 

Paper 2. The Poetry of Clough. Form. Note versification 
and style. 

Paper 3. The Poetry of Arnold. Substance. Note hope- 
lessness. 

Paper 4. The Poetry of Arnold. Form. Note perfection of 
style in Rugby Chapel, Heine's Grave, Thyrsis, 
Memorial Verses, and The Forsaken Merman. 

For references, consult bibliography. 



SUGGESTIONS FOR CLUBS. 89 

Fifth Meeting. 

John Ruskin. 

Paper i. Ruskin's life as told in Prceterita. 

Paper 2. Ruskin as an art critic. A study of Modern Painters. 

Paper 3. Ruskin as an economist. A study of Unto this Last, 

Munera Pulveris, The Crown of Wild Olive, Fors 

Clavigera. 
Paper 4. Ruskin as literary critic. A study of Sesame and 

Lilies. 
Paper 5. The style of Ruskin. 
Paper 6. The place of Ruskin in his age. 
For references, consult the bibliography. 

Sixth Meeting. 

Walter Pater. 
Paper i. Life of Pater. 

Paper 2. Pater as an art critic. A study of The Renaissance. 
Paper 3. Pater as a literary critic. A study of Appreciations. 
Paper 4. Pater as a writer of fiction. A study of Imaginary 
Portraits. 

Paper 5. Pater as interpreter of philosophies of life. A study 

of Marius the Epicurean. 
Paper 6. The style of Pater. 
Paper 7. Pater's place in his age. 

For references, consult the bibliography. 



9© SUGGESTIONS FOR CLUBS. 

A Study of Shelley's Adonais. 
First Meeting. 

Paper i. The life of Shelley. 
Paper 2. Shelley's Prometheus Unbound. 
Paper 3. Shelley's lyrics. 
Paper 4. Shelley's place as a poet. 
For references, see bibHography. 

Second Meeting. 

Paper i. The life of Keats, 

Paper 2. Keats's Endymion. 

Paper 3. Keats's The Eve of St. Agnes. 

Paper 4. Keats's Ode on a Grecian Urn. 

Paper 5. Keats's Ode to a Nightingale. 

Paper 6. Keats's La Belle Dame Sans Merci. 

Third Meeting. 

Paper i. Early Reviews of Keats (see Haney's Early Re- 
views of English Poets). 
Paper 2. Arnold's opinion of Keats (see Essays in Criticism). 
Paper 3. Lowell's Opinion of Keats (see Among my Books). 
Paper 4. Shelley's opinion of Keats. 

Adonais, ed. by W. M. Rossetti, is the standard edition, with 
many notes. 



SUGGESTIONS FOR CLUBS. 9 1 

Fourth Meeting. 

Paper i. Shelley's personal relations with Keats. 

Paper 2, Shelley's views of immortality. 

Paper 3. Shelley's allusions to great poets. 

Paper 4. Shelley's attitude toward literary criticism of his day. 

Fifth Meeting. 

The Elegy. 

Paper i. General study of elegy as a lyric type. Note ele- 
ments of lamentation, eulogy, and discussion of 
immortality. 

Paper 2. Study of the pastoral elegy. See Bion's Lament for 
Adonis, trans, by Lang. 

Paper 3. Study of Adonais compared with Milton's Lycidas. 

Paper 4. Study of Adonais compared with Arnold's Thyrsis. 

Sixth Meeting. 

Paper i. Shelley's use of the Spenserian stanza (consult 
Alden's English Verse.) 

Paper 2. Shelley's imagery: metaphors, similes, personifica- 
tions, allusions. 

Paper 3. Shelley's choice of words: epithets, verbs, and com- 
pound words. 

Paper 4. The melody of A donais. 

Paper 5. The place of Adonais in literature. 



Prottounrtng ICtBt. 



The Century Dictionary of Names and the appendix of Web- 
ster's International Dictionary will give pronunciation of all 
important names of persons, of places, and of works of fiction. 
In the list below the double vowel represents the long vowel 
sound: ay^ a in day, ee= e in feet, ii= i in right, ohr= o 
in so, uuzr: u in use, ch=: as in church. 
Athenaeum : Ath-e-nee'-um. 
Bagehot: Ba'j-ot. 
Bronte': Bron-ta'y. 

Jane Eyre: Air. 
Browning: 

Abt Vogler: Fo'g-ler. 

Andrea del Sarto : An-dray'-a. 

Pippa Passes: Pip'-pa. 

Guiseppe Caponsacchi: Juu-sep'-pe Cap-on-sak'-ki. 

Guido Franceschini : Gwee'-do Fran'-ches-kee'-ni. 

PompiUa Comparini: Pom-pil'-i-a Com-par-ee'-ni. 
Carlyle: Car-li'il. 
C lough: Cluf. 

Dipsychus : Dip'-si-kus. 
Elia: Ee'-U-a. 



PRONOUNCING LIST. 93 

Eliot: 

Adam Bede: Beed. 

Romola: Rom'-o-la. 
Giaour : Jower, to rhyme with ' ' bower. " 
Guenevere: Gwe'n-e-veer. 
Keats: Keets. 

Endymion : En-dim'-i-on. 

La Belle Dame Sans Merci: Bel'-a-Dahm'-a San Mer-see'. 

Hyperion : Hii-pee'-ri-on. 
Pater: Pa'y-ter. 
Renaissance: Ren-ay-sa'hns. 
Rossetti: Ros-set'-ti (no z sound). 

Sesame and Lilies: Ses'-a-me. 
Ruskin: 

Clavigera: Cla-vi'j-e-ra. 

Munera Pulveris: Mu'u-nee-ra Pul'-ver-is. 

Praeterita: Pree-te'r-i-ta. 
Shelley: 

Adonais: Ad-o-nay'-is. 

Epipsychidion : Ep-i-si-kid'-i-on. 

Cenci: Che'n-chi. 
Swinburne. 

Atalanta in Calydon : At-a-lan'-ta in Cal'-i-don. 
Thyrsis: Thir'-sis. 



APR 24 1907 



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